Big Breasts & Wide Hips

1

After getting an injection to stop the bleeding, Mother slowly came around. I was the first thing she saw – more specifically, what she saw was the little pecker standing up like a silkworm chrysalis between my legs – and the dullness in her eyes was replaced by light. She picked me up and kissed me, like a hen pecking rice. Crying hoarsely, I sought out the nipple, which she stuck in my mouth. I began to suck, but instead of milk, all I got was a taste of blood. I was bawling, Eighth Sister – the girl born just before me – was whimpering. Mother laid me alongside my sister and struggled to get down off the kang. She walked unsteadily over to the water vat, bent over, and drank a ladleful of water. Numbly she looked out at the corpses in the yard. The adult donkey and her baby mule stood trembling beside the bed of peanuts. My older sisters walked into the yard, cutting a sorry figure. They ran to Mother and wept weakly before crumpling to the floor.

White smoke billowed out of our chimney for the first time since the catastrophe. Mother broke open Grandma’s trunk and removed some preserved eggs, dates, rock candy, and a piece of old ginseng that had lain there for years. She threw it all into the wok, and when the water began to sizzle, it set the eggs in rapid motion. Finally, Mother called all the girls in and sat them around a large platter. “All right, children,” she said, “eat.”

My sisters scooped the hot food out of the platter and ate ravenously. Mother only drank the broth, three bowlfuls, until there was nothing left. They were quiet for a while, but then threw their arms around each other and wailed. Mother waited until they had cried themselves out before announcing, “Girls, you have a little brother, and another little sister.”

Mother suckled me. Her milk tasted like dates, rock candy, and preserved eggs, a magnificent liquid. I opened my eyes. My sisters looked at me excitedly. I returned their looks bleary-eyed. After draining Mother’s breast of its milk, surrounded by the cries of my baby sister, I closed my eyes. I heard Mother pick up Eighth Sister and sigh. “You’re one I didn’t need.”

Early the next morning, the clang of a gong shattered the quiet of the lane. Sima Ting, the Felicity Manor steward, called out hoarsely: “Fellow villagers, carry out your dead, bring them all out.”

Mother stood in the yard holding Eighth Sister and me in her arms and wailing loudly; there were no tears on her cheeks. She was surrounded by her daughters, some crying, some not; there were no tears on their cheeks either.

Sima Ting walked into the yard with his brass gong, looking like a dried-out gourd, a man of inestimable age, his face deeply wrinkled. He had a nose like a strawberry, deep black eyes that kept rolling in their sockets, the eyes of a little boy. His aging stooped shoulders gave him the look of a candle guttering in the wind, but his hands were fair and plump, the palms nicely dimpled. He walked up to Mother and struck his gong with all his might. A gravelly klong wah-wah-wah-wah emerged from the cracked gong. Mother swallowed a sob, straightened her neck, and held her breath for at least a full minute. “What a tragedy!” Sima Ting said with an exaggerated sigh. Desperate grief was written on his lips, in the corners of his mouth, on his cheeks, even on his earlobes. And yet, despite the obvious sense of righteous indignation, there was an unmistakable hint of a smirk hidden in the space between his nose and eyes, a look of furtive glee. He walked up to the rigid body of Shangguan Fulu and stood woodenly beside it for a moment. Then he went over to the headless body of Shangguan Shouxi, where he bent down and looked into the dead eyes of the severed head, as if wanting to establish an emotional link. Saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth. In contrast to the peaceful expression on Shangguan Shouxi’s face, Sima looked somewhat stupid, and savage. “You people wouldn’t listen to me, why wouldn’t you listen to me?…” He was scolding the dead men in a low voice, talking to himself. He walked back up to Mother: “Shouxi’s wife, I’ll get someone to take them away. In this weather… well, you see.” He looked heavenward, and so did Mother. The sky was an oppressive leaden gray, and off to the east, the sunrise, blood red, was being beaten back by dark clouds. Our stone lions were damp. “The rain, it’s coming. If we don’t carry them away, once it starts raining, and then the sun comes out, you can imagine what it will do to them.” Mother held my sister and me in her arms and knelt in front of Sima Ting. “Steward,” she said, “I am a widow with a brood of orphaned children, so we will have to rely on you from now on. Children, come bow to your uncle.” All my older sisters knelt in front of Sima Ting, who hit the gong – bong bong-with all his might. “Fuck his ancestors!” he cursed, as tears streamed down his face. “It’s all the fault of that bastard Sha Yueliang. His ambush infuriated the Japanese, who went on a murderous rampage against us common people. Get up, girls, all of you, and stop crying. Yours is not the only family that has suffered. Just my luck that the county head put me in charge of this town. He fled for his life, but I’m still here. Fuck his ancestors! Hey there, Gou San, Yao Si, quit your dawdling. Are you waiting for me to send a sedan chair for you?”

Gou San and Yao Si came running into the yard bent at the waist, followed by some of the town idlers. They were Sima Ting’s errand boys, his honor guard and his followers, his prestige and his authority, the means by which he carried out his duties. Yao Si held a notebook with a ragged-edged straw-paper cover under his arm and had a pencil stuck behind his ear. Gou San strained to roll Shangguan Fulu over, so he could look up into the red morning clouds. He sang out: “Shangguan Fulu – head crushed in – head of the family.” Yao Si wetted a finger, opened the household registration notebook, and thumbed his way through it until he found the Shangguan page. Then he took the pencil from behind his ear, knelt on one knee, and rested his notebook on the other; after touching the tip of his pencil to his tongue, he struck out Shangguan Fulu’s name. “Shangguan Shouxi” – Gou San’s voice suddenly lost its crispness – “head separated from body.” A wail tore from Mother’s throat. Sima Ting turned to Yao Si: “Go ahead, record it, you hear me?” Yao Si drew a small circle over Shangguan Shouxi’s name, without listing the cause of death. Sima Ting raised the mallet in his hand and thumped Yao Si in the head. “Your mother’s legs! How dare you cut corners with the dead, thinking you can take advantage of me because I can’t read, is that it?” With a drawn look on his face, Yao Si pleaded: “Don’t hit me, old master. It’s all right up here.” He pointed to his head. “I’ll not forget any of it, not in a thousand years.” Sima Ting glared at him. “And what makes you think you’ll live that long? A thousand years, you must be some sort of turtle spawn.” “Old master, it was only a figure of speech. Why start a fight?” “Who’s starting a fight?” Sima Ting thumped him on the head again. “Shangguan” – Gou San, who was standing in front of Shangguan Lü, turned to Mother and asked, “What was your mother-in-law’s maiden name?” Mother shook her head. Yao Si tapped the notebook with the tip of his pencil and said, “It was Lü.” “Shangguan nee Lü,” Gou San shouted as he bent down to look at the corpse. “That’s strange, there are no wounds,” he muttered, turning Shangguan Lü’s gray head this way and that. A thin moan escaped from between her lips, straightening Gou San up in a hurry. He backed off, gaping in astonishment and stammering, “She’s come back… back to life.” Shangguan Lü opened her eyes slowly, like a newborn baby, glazed and lacking focus. Mother shouted, “Ma!” She handed me and my eighth sister to two of the older girls and ran up to her mother-in-law, stopping abruptly when she noticed that the old woman’s eyes had settled on me as I lay in First Sister’s arms. “Everyone,” Sima Ting said, “the old woman has returned briefly from death to see the child. Is it a boy?” The gaze in Shangguan Lü’s eyes made me squirm, and I began to cry. “Let her look at her grandchild,” Sima Ting said, “so she can leave us in peace.” Mother took me from First Sister, got down on her knees, and shuffled up to the old woman, where she held me up close to her. “Ma,” she said tearfully, “I had no choice”… A light flashed into Shangguan Lü’s eyes when her gaze alit on that spot between my legs. A rumble emerged from her abdomen, followed by a rank odor. “That’s it,” Sima Ting said, “this time she’s really gone.” Mother stood up with me in her arms and, in front of a crowd of men, opened her blouse and stuffed a nipple into my mouth. With my face nestled against her heavy breast, I stopped crying. Sima Ting announced, “Shangguan née Lü, wife of Shangguan Fulu, mother of Shangguan Shouxi, has died of a broken heart over the deaths of her husband and her son. All right, take her away!”

The corpse detail walked up to Shangguan Lü with metal hooks, but before they could place them under her, she stood up slowly, like an ancient tortoise. With the sun shining down, her puffy face looked like a lemon, or a New Year’s cake. She had a sneer on her face as she sat with her back against the wall, like a miniature mountain.

“Elder sister-in-law,” Sima Ting said, “you have a tight grip on life.”

Covering their mouths with towels sprayed with sorghum liquor to ward off the smell of rotting corpses, the town head’s followers carried up a door plank on which the remnants of a New Year’s couplet could nearly be made out. After laying the plank on the ground, four town idlers – now designated as the official town corpse detail – quickly picked Shangguan Fulu up by his arms and legs and laid him out on the plank. Then two of them carried the plank out the gate. One of Shangguan Fulu’s rigid arms hung off the side of the plank and swung like a pendulum. “Drag the old lady away from the gate!” one of the idlers shouted. Two men rushed over. “It’s old Aunty Sun. How could she have died there?” someone in the lane wondered aloud. “Put her on the cart.” The lane was buzzing with comments.

The door plank was laid out beside Shangguan Shouxi, who lay in the position in which he died. Transparent bubbles floated skyward from his mouth, opened in his screams to the heavens, as if a crab were hidden inside. The corpse detail hesitated, not sure what to do. “Oh, hell,” one of them said, “let’s get on with it.” He picked up his metal hook, but was stopped short by Mother’s shout: “Don’t use hooks on him!” She handed me to Shangguan Laidi, then, with a loud wail, threw herself on the headless corpse of her husband. She reached out to drag the head over, but drew her hand back when it touched flesh. “Let it go, sister-in-law!” one of the idlers said, his voice muffled by the towel covering it. “That head cannot be reattached. Go take a look in the cart out there. All that’s left of some of those bodies is a leg, after the dogs got to them. He could be in worse shape. Step aside, you girls. Turn your heads and don’t look.” He wrapped his arms around Mother and half-carried, half-pushed her to one side, along with my sisters. “Close your eyes, all of you!” he warned us once more.

By the time Mother and my sisters opened their eyes again, all the bodies had been removed from the yard.

We fell in behind the horse cart, piled high with corpses, dust rising in its wake. There were three horses, like the ones my sister Laidi saw that other morning: one apricot yellow, one date red, and one leek green. But now they plodded on dejectedly, their heads drooping, their coats dull. The apricot yellow lead horse had a gimp leg, and thrust its neck out with each step. The driver dragged his whip along the ground, his free hand resting on the shaft. The sides of his hair were black, the middle completely white, like a titmouse. A dozen or more dogs on the sides of the road stared hungrily at the corpses on the cart. A procession of survivors followed the cart, all but hidden in the dust; we in turn were followed by our town head, Sima Ting, and his underlings, led by Gou San and Yao Si. Some had hoes over their shoulders, others carried metal hooks; one man shouldered a bamboo pole with strips of red cloth tied to the end. Sima Ting was still holding his gong, which he struck every few dozen steps. And with every clang, the families of the deceased wailed. But they seemed reluctant to cry, and no sooner had the sound of the gong trailed off than the crying stopped. Rather than grieve for their family members, it appeared, they were carrying out duties given them by the town head.

And so it went, us following the horse cart, crying from time to time, past the church, with its collapsed bell tower, and the flour mill where Sima Ting and his younger brother, Sima Ku, had harnessed the wind five years earlier. A dozen or more rickety windmills still rose above the mill, creaking in the wind. On the right, we passed the site of a company created twenty years before by a Japanese businessman to grow American cotton. Then we passed the podium on the drying floor of the Sima compound where Niu Tengxiao, Gaomi’s county magistrate, had gotten the women to unbind their feet. Finally, the cart turned left, following the Black Water River, and drove into a field that extended all the way to the marshland. Gusts of moist air from the south carried the odor of decay. Toads in roadside ditches and in the shallows of the river croaked weakly. Swarms of fat tadpoles changed the color of the water.

The cart sped up once it entered the field. The “Old Titmouse” driver used his whip on the lead horse, gimp leg or no. The cart bounced around wildly on the uneven road, the corpses giving off a terrible stench. Something wet dripped through the cracks in the bed of the cart. By then, the crying had stopped altogether, and family members were covering their mouths and noses with their sleeves. Sima Ting and his followers brushed past us and rushed up to the cart, bent at the waist as they ran, leaving us and the cart behind, that and the stench. A dozen mad dogs set up a cacophony of howls as they leapt all over the wheat fields on either side of the road. They kept appearing and disappearing amid the wheat stalks, like seals leaping through the waves. It was a day set aside for crows and hawks. All the crows in Northeast Gaomi descended on the township’s basin, like a dark cloud settling over the horse cart. They circled the area, their excited screeches filling the air as they formed a myriad of patterns before going into nosedives. Older crows went straight for the corpses’ eyes, pecking them out with their hard, pointed beaks; younger, less experienced birds attacked the skulls, setting up a loud tattoo. “Old Titmouse” flicked his whip at them, each time bringing down at least one bird, which was turned to mush under the wheels of the cart. Seven or eight hawks circled high in the sky, sometimes forced by competing air currents down below the crows. They were just as interested in the corpses, but refused to join forces with crows, over whom they maintained smug superiority.

The sun poked its face out from behind a cloud, bestowing upon the maturing wheat plants a resplendent glow and causing the wind to change direction, which created a momentary stillness that put waves of wheat to sleep, or to death. A golden platter, seemingly extending all the way to the horizon, rose under the sun. Spikes on the ripe wheat were like tiny golden needles that set the world aglitter. The horse cart turned onto a narrow path in the middle of the field, forcing the driver to thread his way between two rows of wheat stalks. The lead horses, one apricot yellow, the other leek green, could not negotiate the path side by side, so either the yellow horse had to walk amid the wheat stalks or the green horse was forced to plod through the layer of gold. Like pouting little boys, one would push the other off the path, only to be pushed right back. And so the cart slowed, which sent the crows into a frenzy. Dozens of them landed on the heads of corpses and began pecking away, their wings drooping. “Old Titmouse” had his hands too full to worry about the birds. The crop that year was sure to be a good one, since the stalks were thick, the tassels full, and the kernels plump. Wheat spikes brushing against the horses’ bellies and scraping against the cart and its tires produced a skin-tingling scratchy sound. Dogs poked their heads out from between stalks, eyes shut to protect them from the spikes. Tracking the cart was easy; they just followed their noses.

Our procession thinned out and grew longer once we were in the wheat field. No one was wailing any longer, not even sobbing softly. Every once in a while a child would stumble and fall, and someone, usually a family member, would reach out a friendly hand and help him to his feet. In the midst of this solemn unity, children refused to cry even with a split lip. Silence reigned, but it was a tense, uneasy silence. The passing cart and mad dogs startled partridges in the field, sending them flapping into the air only to settle once again into a sea of gold. Wheat snakes, those poisonous red vipers unique to Northeast Gaomi, slithered among the wheat like lightning bolts, causing the horses to shudder; dogs crept along the ruts, not daring to look up. The sun was partially hidden behind dark clouds, the revealed half sending down scorching rays of light. Cloud shadows seemed to fly above the wheat field, momentarily extinguishing the golden flames that engulfed the sunlit stalks. As the wind changed direction, millions of spiked tassels set up wind currents; kernels of wheat, their voices hushed, relayed their frightful news.

At first, warm gusts of wind from the northeast brushed the tips of the stalks, shaped by the tassels through which they passed, and opened up tiny gurgling currents amid the tranquil sea of wheat. Then the wind picked up in intensity, cleaving its way through the wheat stalks. The red banner carried by a man up front began to flutter; clouds overhead rumbled. A golden serpent writhed in the northeastern sky, which was dyed blood red; peals of thunder rolled earthward. Another momentary hush, during which hawks circling high above wheeled toward the field and disappeared among the stalks of wheat. Crows, on the other hand, exploded skyward, trailing loud caws behind them. The storm burst, sending the wheat reeling, some of the stalks swerving from north to west and others from east to south. Long, flowing waves pushing and being pushed by short, choppy ones formed a yellow whirlpool. It looked as if the sea of wheat was boiling over a vast cauldron. Crows scattered. Pale, flimsy raindrops brought with them hailstones the size of apricot pits. Chilled air immediately cut to the bone. The hailstones pelted the wheat tassels and spikes, the horses’ rumps and ears, the exposed bellies of the dead and the bare scalps of the living. An occasional crow, its head cracked by a hailstone, fell like a stone right in front of us.

Mother held me tightly, shielding my fragile head by burying it in the warm valley between her ample breasts. She had left Eighth Sister, a superfluous human being from the moment she was born, on the kang to accompany the now mindless Shangguan Lü, who crawled into the western side room and gobbled down handfuls of donkey turds.

My sisters took off their shirts and covered their heads with them. All except Laidi, since the little green apples that were her girlish breasts showed beneath her shirt; she covered her head with her hands, but got soaked anyway. The wind plastered her shirt up against her body.

Finally, our exhausting trudging brought us to the public cemetery, ten acres of open land surrounded by wheat fields. Rotting wooden markers stood at dozens of overgrown grave mounds.

The rainsquall passed and splintered clouds skittered out of sight, giving way to a dazzling blue sky and blistering sunlight. Steam rose from the melting hailstones. Some of the damaged wheat stalks straightened up; others would never stand erect again. Cold winds abruptly turned hot, warming the ripening kernels of wheat, which were turning bright yellow.

As we massed at the edge of the cemetery, we watched our town head, Sima Ting, pace the area, scattering locusts with each step, their soft green outer wings revealing the pink wings beneath. He stopped beside a wild chrysanthemum bush, covered with little yellow blooms. Stomping on the ground, he called out: “Right here, here’s where I want you to dig.”

Seven swarthy men with spades over their shoulders walked up listlessly, casting looks back and forth, as if wanting to commit all the other faces to memory. Finally, they turned to look at Sima Ting. “What are you gawking at me for?” Sima bellowed. “Dig!” He tossed away his gong and mallet. The gong landed in a clump of white-tasseled weeds, where it startled a lizard; the mallet landed atop some dogweed. Grabbing one of the spades, he jammed the blade into the ground and stomped down with his foot, listing slightly to the side as the spade bit deeply into the earth. Straining mightily, he lifted up a spadeful of earth and grass and turned ninety degrees, holding the spade out in front of him. He then spun a hundred-eighty degrees and, with a loud grunt, sent the dirt flying, tumbling in the air like a dead rooster and landing in a clump of yellow dandelions. Handing the spade back to its owner, he said, somewhat breathlessly: “Now dig. I’m sure you can smell the stench by now.”

The men began to dig, sending dirt flying. Slowly, a ditch took shape, deeper and deeper.

By then it was noon. The sun turned the earth a shimmering white; the stench from the cart grew stronger, and even though we were upwind, the gut-wrenching odor followed us. Then the crows returned. Their wings were bathed a shiny blue-black. Sima Ting retrieved his gong and mallet and, braving the stench, ran up to the cart. “You feathered bastards, let’s see which of you has the guts to come down here! I’ll tear you limb from limb!” He banged his gong and began jumping around, shouting curses into the air. Crows circled a good fifty feet above the cart, their caws tumbling earthward along with droppings and worn-out feathers. “Old Titmouse” picked up the red-bannered staff and shook it at the crows, which separated into groups that went into steep, screeching dives, circling the heads of Sima Ting and “Old Titmouse,” with their tiny oval eyes, powerful stiff wings, and hideously filthy talons. The men fought them off, but the unyielding beaks kept finding their mark. So the men used the gong and mallet and the staff as weapons, increasing the sounds of battle. Wounded crows folded their wings and thudded into the velvet grass amid the white flowers, then limped off into the field, dragging their wings behind them. Mad dogs hidden among the stalks were on them like a shot, quickly tearing them to pieces. In no time, sticky feathers littered the ground, while the dogs retreated to the edge of the field to crouch in readiness, panting noisily, scarlet tongues lolling to the sides of their mouths. Some of the uninjured crows kept up their assault on Sima Ting and “Old Titmouse,” but the bulk of their force attacked the cart – noisily, excitedly, repulsively – their necks like springs, their beaks like awls, as they feasted on delicious human carrion, a demonic feast. Sima Ting and “Old Titmouse” fell to the ground, exhausted, runnels of sweat cobwebbed on their dusty exposed faces.

The pit by then was more than shoulder-deep, and all we could see were the occasional top of someone’s head and soaring clumps of wet, white mud; the air was suffused with the cool, fresh smell of raw earth.

One of the men climbed out of the pit and walked up alongside Sima Ting. “Town Head,” he said, “we’ve struck water.” Sima looked at him with glazed eyes and slowly raised his arm. “Come take a look,” the man said. “It’s deep enough.” Sima crooked a finger at the man, who was puzzled by the sign. “Idiot!” Sima growled. “Help me up.” The man bent down and helped Sima to his feet. Moaning, Sima thumped his waist with his fists and, with the other man’s help, hobbled over to the ridge of the pit. “Goddamn it,” Sima Ting cursed. “Get up here, you bastards, you’ll dig all the way down to Hell before you know it.”

The men climbed out of the pit and were pelted by the corrupt stench of the dead. Sima kicked the carter. “On your feet,” he demanded, “and get your cart over there.” The carter didn’t budge. “Gou San, Yao Si,” Sima bellowed, “toss this son of a bitch in first!”

Gou San, who was standing with the other men, grunted a reply.

“Where’s Yao Si?” Sima asked. “The itchy-footed prick slipped away already,” Gou San said angrily. “Smash that bastard’s rice bowl when we get back,” Sima said as he gave the carter another kick. “Let’s see if this one’s dead.”

The carter climbed to his feet, a hangdog look on his face, and cast a fearful glance at his cart standing at the edge of the graveyard. The crows were clustered on the bed, hopping up and down with loud, piercing cries. The horses were lying on the ground, their noses buried in the grass, crows perched on their backs. The rest of the crows were on the grassy ground, feasting. Two of them were fighting over a large morsel, one backing up, the other reluctantly surging forward and forcing the other to keep retreating. From time to time, neither would budge, as they dug in their talons, flapped their wings frantically, thrust out their heads, neck feathers standing straight up to reveal the purple skin beneath, both necks seemingly about to detach themselves from the torsos behind. A dog came out of nowhere and snapped up the entrails, dragging the two birds tumbling through the grass.

“Spare me, Town Head,” the carter implored as he fell to his knees in front of Sima Ting, who picked up a dirt clod and hurled it at the crows. They barely noticed. He then walked up to the families of the deceased and muttered, “That’s it, that will do it. You folks go home.”

Mother was the first of the stunned crowd to get down on her knees, followed by the others, who raised a piteous howl. “Elder Sima, lay them to rest,” Mother begged. The rest of the crowd pleaded with him, “Please, please, lay them to rest. Father, Mother, our children…”

Sweat poured down Sima’s neck from his bowed head. With an exasperated gesture, he walked back to where his men were standing, and said softly, “Brothers, I have tolerated your bullying tactics, your thievery, your fights, your taking advantage of widows, your grave-robbing, and all the other sins against heaven and earth. One trains soldiers for a thousand days, all for a single battle. And now, today, we have a job to do, even if the crows gouge out our eyes and peck out our brains. I, the town head, will take the lead, and I will fuck eighteen generations of women in the families of any one of you who tries to slack off! After we’ve finished, I’ll take you back and get you all drunk. Now on your feet,” he said to the carter, pulling him up by his ear, “and get that cart over here! Men, pick up your weapons, the battle is on!”

At that moment, three dark-skinned youngsters swam up through the waves of wheat. It was Aunty Sun’s mute grandsons. They were all wearing the same colored shorts, and nothing else. The tallest of the three was brandishing a sword that whipped in the air, making a whistling sound. The second was carrying a wood-handled dagger; and the shortest brought up the rear dragging a long-handled sword. With wide, staring eyes, they grunted and made a series of gestures describing their anguish. As a light flickered in Sima Ting’s eyes, he patted each of them on the head. “Youngsters,” he said, “your grandma and your brothers are there on the cart. We are going to bury them. Those damned crows have gone too far. They are the Japs, so let’s take the fight to them! Do you understand what I’m saying?” Yao Si, who had reappeared from somewhere, made some signs to the boys. Tears and flames of outrage spewed from the eyes of the mutes, who charged the crows, their knives and swords flashing in the air.

“You slippery devil, where the hell have you been?” Sima demanded of Yao Si, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him violently.

“I went to get those three.”

The mutes jumped up onto the back of the cart, quickly bloodying their flashing knives and swords, sending dismembered crows thudding to the ground. “Charge!” Sima Ting shouted. The men swarmed up to the cart to fight the crows. Curses, the sounds of battle, the screeches of crows, and the flapping of wings created a sheet of noise that joined a convergence of fetid smells – death, sweat, blood, mud, wheat, and wildflowers.

The torn and broken bodies were laid out pell-mell in the pit. Pastor Malory stood atop the new earth beside the pit and intoned, “Dear Lord, deliver the souls of these unfortunate victims…” Tears streamed from his blue eyes down through the purplish scars from the whip; from there they dripped onto his ripped black robe and the heavy bronze crucifix on his chest.

Sima Ting pulled him down off the ridge of the pit. “Malory,” he said, “go over there and take it easy. Don’t forget that you barely escaped the jaws of death yourself.”

As the men shoveled dirt into the pit, Pastor Malory cast a long shadow under the setting sun. Mother stood there watching him and feeling her heart race beneath her heavy left breast. By the time the sun’s rays had turned red, a massive grave mound had risen in the middle of the cemetery. Sima Ting led the survivors in kowtowing before the mound and discharging several obligatory but feeble wails. Mother urged the family members of the victims to kowtow to Sima Ting and his funeral detail to show their gratitude. “There’s no need for that,” Sima said.

The members of the funeral detail walked toward the sunset on their way home. Mother and my sisters were well behind the ragged column of people, which stretched for at least a quarter of a mile, with Pastor Malory bringing up the rear on unsteady legs. Thick human shadows lay across the fields of wheat. Under the sun’s blood-red rays, the seemingly endless expanse of quiet was broken by the tramping of feet, the whistling of the wind past the stalks of wheat, the hoarse sounds of my crying, and the first drawn-out mournful hoot of a fat owl as it woke from a day’s sleep in the canopy of a mulberry tree in the cemetery. It had a heart-stopping effect on everyone who heard it. Mother stopped to look back at the cemetery, where purple mist rose from the ground. Pastor Malory bent down to pick up my seventh sister, Qiudi. “You poor things,” he said.

His words hung in the air when a chorus of millions of chirping insects rose all around him.

2

It was on the morning of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a hundred days after my sister and I were born, when Mother took us to see Pastor Malory. The church gate facing the street was tightly shut and marred by blasphemous, antireligious graffiti. We took the path to the rear of the church, where our raps on the door echoed in the wilderness. The emaciated goat was tied to a stake beside the door. She had such a long face that she looked more like a donkey or a camel or an old woman than a goat. She raised her head to look gloomily at Mother, who clipped her on the chin with the toe of her shoe. After a lingering complaint, she lowered her head to continue grazing. A rumbling noise was accompanied by the sound of Pastor Malory’s coughs. Mother rang the bell. “Who is it?” Pastor Malory asked. “Me,” Mother replied softly. The squeaky door opened a crack, and Mother slipped inside with us in her arms. Pastor Malory shut the door behind her, then turned, reached out and embraced us with his long arms. “My adorable little ones, the fruit of my loins…”

Sha Yueliang and his newly formed band of men, the Black Donkey Musket Band, walked spiritedly up the road we’d just taken on the funeral procession, heading straight for our village. On one side of the road, sorghum grew tall amid the wheat; reeds stretched to the edge of the Black Water River on the other side. A sun-drenched summer, with plenty of sweet rain, had made it a wildly fruitful growing season. The leaves were fat and the stalks thick, even before there were silks atop the head-high sorghum; river reeds were lush and black, the stems and leaves covered by white fuzz. Even though it was already mid-autumn, there wasn’t a hint of autumn in the air. And yet, the sky was the rich blue of autumn, the sun autumnally beautiful.

Sha Yueliang had a band of twenty-eight men, all riding identical black donkeys from the hilly south country of Wulian County. With their thick, muscular bodies and stumpy legs, the donkeys were easily outrun by horses; but they had amazing stamina and could be ridden for long distances. Sha had selected these twenty-eight donkeys from over eight hundred: not gelded, blessed with loud, strident voices, young, black, and energetic. Those were their mounts. The twenty-eight animals formed a black line, like a flowing stream. A milky white mist floated about the road; sunbeams were reflected off the donkeys’ backs. When he spotted the battered clock tower and watchtower, Sha reined in his lead donkey. The ones behind kept coming stubbornly. Looking back into the faces of his band, he told the men to dismount, then ordered them to wash up and clean their donkeys. A look of sobriety and seriousness adorned his dark, gaunt face as he dressed down his band of men, who lazed around after dismounting. He had elevated washing up and cleaning mounts to glorious heights. He told his men that the anti-Japanese guerrillas were popping up everywhere, like mushrooms, and that the Black Donkey Musket Band was going to take its place ahead of all others, owing to its unique style, until it became the sole occupying force of Northeast Gaomi Township. In order to impress the villagers, they needed to carefully watch what they said and did. Under his mobilization, the band’s morale surged; after taking off their shirts and spreading them on the ground, they stood in the shallows of the river and sent water spraying as they washed up. Their newly shaved heads glinted in the sunlight. Sha Yueliang took a bar of soap from his knapsack and cut it into strips, which he handed out to his men, telling them to wash every speck of dust off their bodies. Joining them in the river, he bent down until his scarred shoulder nearly touched the water, so he could scrub his dirty neck. While their riders were washing up, the donkeys grazed among the leafy water reeds or chewed the leaves of sorghum stalks or nibbled at one another’s rumps; some just stood there deep in thought or slipped the meaty clubs out of their sheaths and beat them against their bellies. As the donkeys busied themselves with whatever pleased them, Mother struggled free of Pastor Malory’s embrace. “You’re crushing the babies, you foolish donkey!”

Pastor Malory smiled apologetically, revealing two neat rows of white teeth; he reached out to us with one of his big red hands, paused for a second, then reached out with the other. Grabbing hold of one of his fingers, I began to gurgle. But Eighth Sister lay there like a log, neither crying nor squirming nor making any noise at all. She had been born blind. Cradling me in one arm, Mother said, “Look at him, he’s laughing.” She then deposited me into those big, sweaty waiting hands. He put his head down next to mine, so close I could see every strand of red hair on his head, the brown whiskers on his chin, his hawkish nose, and the benevolent gleam in his eyes. Suddenly I felt sharp pains up and down my back; taking my thumb out of my mouth, I let out a howl and a gusher of tears as the pain seemed to penetrate the marrow of my bones. I felt his whiskery lips on my forehead – they seemed to be trembling – and got a powerful whiff of his goat’s milk and oniony breath.

He handed me back to Mother. “I frightened him,” he said sheepishly.

Mother handed Eighth Sister to Pastor Malory after taking me from him. She patted and rocked me. “Don’t cry,” she purred. “Do you know who he is? Are you afraid of him? Don’t be, he’s a good man, your very own… very own godfather…”

The pains in my back continued, and I cried myself hoarse. So Mother pulled open her blouse and stuck a nipple into my mouth. I seized it like a drowning man clutching at a straw and sucked desperately. Her milk had a grassy taste as it poured down my throat. But the shooting pains in my back forced me to let go so I could cry some more. Wringing his hands anxiously, Pastor Malory ran over to the base of the wall, where he pulled up a tasseled weed and flicked it back and forth in front of me to stop me from crying. It didn’t work. So he ran back and pulled up a sunflower, as big as the moon and ringed with golden petals, then brought it over to wave in the air for me. I was drawn to the flower’s smell. All during Pastor Malory’s frantic running back and forth, Eighth Sister slept peacefully in his arms. “Look at that, darling,” Mother said. “Your godfather plucked the moon out of the sky for you.” I reached out for the moon, but was stopped short by more shooting pains. “What’s wrong with him?” Mother asked, her lips pale, her face bathed in sweat. Pastor Malory said, “Maybe something’s pricking him.”

With Pastor Malory’s help, Mother took off the red outfit she’d made for me in celebration of my hundredth day in this world, and discovered a needle caught in one of the folds. It had drawn dozens of bloody pinpricks on my back. She flung it over the wall. “My poor baby,” she said tearfully, “it’s all my fault! My fault!” She slapped herself, hard. Then a second time. Two crisp smacks. Pastor Malory grabbed her hand, then walked behind her and put his arms around both of us. He kissed Mother on her cheeks, her ears, and her hair with his moist lips. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “It’s mine. Blame me.” His tenderness had a calming effect on Mother, who sat in the doorway and stuffed the nipple back into my mouth. Her sweet milk moistened my throat, as the pain in my back gradually disappeared. With my lips around a nipple and my hands cupping one breast, I kneaded and protected the other one with my foot. Mother pushed my foot away, but as soon as she let go, it sprang right back up there.

“I checked the clothes when I put them on him,” she said uncertainly, “so where did that needle come from? The old witch must have put it there! She hates all the females in this family!”

“Does she know? About us, I mean,” Pastor Malory asked.

“I told her,” Mother said. “She kept pressuring me, until I could no longer take her abuse. She is an outrageous old witch.”

Pastor Malory handed Eighth Sister back to mother. “Feed her,” he said. “They are both gifts from God, and you should not play favorites.”

Mother’s face colored as she took the baby from him. But when she tried to give her the nipple, I kicked my sister in the belly. She started bawling.

“Did you see that?” Mother said. “What a little tyrant! Go get her some goat’s milk.”

After Pastor Malory had fed Eighth Sister, he laid her down on the kang. She didn’t cry and she didn’t squirm. He then studied the downy fuzz on my head. Mother noticed his quizzical look. “What are you looking at? Do we look like strangers to you?” “No,” he said with a shake of his head, a foolish smile on his face. “The little wretch suckles like a wolf.” “Like someone else I know.” Mother replied mischievously. He smiled even more foolishly. “You don’t mean me, do you? What sort of child was I?” His eyes grew clouded as he thought back to his youth, which he’d spent in a place spent many thousands of miles away. Two teardrops fell from those eyes. “What’s wrong?” Mother asked. He tried to hide his embarrassment with a dry laugh as he wiped his eyes with thickly knuckled fingers. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’ve been in China… how long now?” A note of displeasure crept into Mother’s voice: “I can’t remember a time when you weren’t here. You’re a local, just like me.” “No,” he said, “I have roots in another country. I was sent by the archbishop as one of God’s messengers, and I once owned a document to prove it.” Mother laughed. “Old man,” she said, “my uncle says you’re a fake foreign devil, and that your so-called document was a forgery from an artisan in Pingdu County.” “Nonsense!” Pastor Malory jerked upright, as if deeply offended. “That Big Paw Yu is a stupid ass!” “Don’t talk like that about my uncle,” Mother said unhappily. “I’ll forever be in his debt.” “If he weren’t your uncle,” Pastor Malory said, “I’d relieve him of his manhood.” Mother laughed. “He can fell a mule with his fist.” “If you won’t believe I’m Swedish,” he said dejectedly, “then no one will.” He took out his pipe, filled it with tobacco, and began smoking silently. Mother sighed. “Isn’t it enough that I admit you’re an authentic foreigner? Why be angry with me? Have you ever seen a Chinese as hairy as you?” A childlike smile appeared on Pastor Malory’s face. “I’ll return to my home someday,” he said. Then, after a thoughtful pause, he added, “But if I really had the opportunity to do it, maybe I wouldn’t go. Not unless you came with me.” “You’ll never leave here,” she said, “and neither will I. So why not make the best of it? Besides, don’t you always say that it doesn’t make any difference what color hair a person has – blond, black, or red – that we’re all God’s lambs? And that all any lamb needs is a green pasture. Isn’t a pasture the size of Northeast Gaomi enough for you?” “It’s enough,” Pastor Malory replied emotionally. “Why would I go anywhere else when you, my grass of miracles, are right here?”

Seeing that Mother and Pastor Malory were otherwise occupied, the donkey at the millstone began nibbling the flour on the stone. Pastor Malory walked up and gave it a loud smack, sending it quickly and noisily back to work. “The babies are asleep,” Mother said, “so I’ll help you sift the flour. Go get a straw mat, and I’ll spread it out in the shade.” Pastor Malory brought a mat over and spread it under a parasol tree; yet even as Mother was laying me on the cool mat, my mouth was clamped defiantly around her nipple. “This child is like a bottomless pit,” she said. “He’ll suck the marrow right out of my bones before I know it.”

Pastor Malory kept the donkey moving: the donkey turned the millstone, the millstone crushed the kernels of wheat, which turned to coarse powder and fanned out atop the stone. As she sat beneath the parasol tree, Mother put a willow basket on the mat and fixed the rack atop it. She then poured the coarse powder into her sieve and began shaking it back and forth rhythmically at an even pace; the snow white flour floated down into the basket, leaving the broken husks behind at the bottom of the sieve. Bright sunlight filtered through the leafy cover and fell on her face and shoulders. An air of domesticity hung over the courtyard, as Pastor Malory followed the donkey round and round the millstone to keep it from slacking off. It was our donkey; Pastor Malory had borrowed it that morning to help mill the wheat. The sweat on its back darkened its hide as it trotted to avoid the sting of the switch. The bleat of a goat beyond the wall heralded the arrival at the gate of the mule that had entered the world the same day I had. The donkey kicked out with its rear hooves. “Let the mule in,” Mother said, “and hurry.” Malory ran over to the gate and shoved the young animal’s lovely head backward to put some slack in the tethering chain. He then unhooked it from the post and jumped back as the mule burst through the gate, ran up to its mother, and grabbed a nipple in its mouth. That calmed the donkey. “Humans and animals are so much alike,” Mother said with a sigh. Malory nodded in agreement.

While our donkey was nursing its bastard offspring around the open-air millstone in Malory’s compound, Sha Yueliang and his band of men were scrubbing their mounts. After brushing the mane and sparse hair of their tails, they dried the donkeys’ hides with fine cotton cloths and waxed them. The twenty-eight donkeys emerged from the grooming like new animals; twenty-eight riders stood proud and energetic and twenty-eight muskets shone brightly. Each man had two gourds tied to his belt, one large and one small. The larger one held gunpowder, the smaller one held birdshot. Each gourd had been treated with three coats of tung oil. All fifty-six polished gourds glinted in the sunlight. The men wore khaki trousers and black jackets, their heads covered by coolie hats woven from sorghum stalks. As squad leader, Sha Yueliang wore a red tassel in his hat. With a satisfied look at his men and their mounts, he said, “Stand tall, brothers. We’ll show those people what a band of men with shiny black donkeys and muskets is made of.” He mounted his donkey, smacked it on the rump, and rode off. Now, horses may be swift, but donkeys are model parade animals; men on horses ride with an air of majesty, while men on donkeys ride with a sense of fulfillment. Before long, the squad appeared on the streets of Dalan. After being pounded by a summer of rain, the streets were hard and sleek, unlike the harvest season, when they would be so dry and dusty that a galloping horse would raise a cloud of dust. Sha’s band of men left a trail of white hoofprints and, of course, the clopping sounds that formed them. Sha’s donkeys were all shod, just like horses. A stroke of genius, thanks to Sha. The crisp clatter first attracted neighborhood children, then Yao Si, the township’s bookkeeper, who came out in a Mandarin robe that belonged to an earlier age, a pencil tucked behind his ear, and planted himself in front of Sha Yueliang’s donkey. Bowing deeply and smiling broadly, he asked, “What troops do you command? Will you take up residence here or are you just passing through? I am at your service.”

Sha leaped down off his donkey and replied, “We’re the Black Donkey Musket Band, an anti-Japanese commando unit. We have been ordered to set up a resistance in Dalan. For that we need quarters, feed for our mounts, and a kitchen. Simple food, like eggs and flatbread, will do just fine for us. But our donkeys are resistance troop mounts, and must be fed well. The hay must be fine and free of impurities, the fodder made of crumbled bean cakes and well water. Not a drop of muddy water from the Flood Dragon River.”

“Sir,” Yao Si said, “duties of this magnitude cannot be entrusted to the likes of me. I must seek instructions from the venerable township head, who has recently been appointed head of the Peace Preservation Corps by the Imperial Army.”

“That cocksucker!” Sha Yueliang cursed darkly. “Anyone who serves the Japanese is a traitorous dog!”

“Sir,” Yao Si explained, “he did not accept the assignment willingly. As the owner of vast acres of land and many draft animals, he wants for nothing. The duty was forced upon him. Besides, someone has to do it, and who better than our steward…”

“Take me to him!” Sha demanded. His men dismounted to rest at the township office while Yao Si escorted Sha to the gate of the township head’s residence, a compound with seven rows of fifteen rooms, each with a connecting garden and separate gate, one leading to the next like a maze. Sha Yueliang’s first sight of Sima Ting was in the midst of an argument with Sima Ku, who was lying in bed nursing wounds sustained in a fire on the fifth day of the fifth month. He had burned down a bridge, but instead of immolating the Japanese, had managed only to burn the skin off his own backside. Taking far too long to heal, his injuries were now compounded by bedsores, which forced him to lie on his belly with his backside elevated.

“Elder brother,” Sima Ku said as he propped himself up on his elbows and raised his head high, “you bastard, you stupid bastard.” His eyes were blazing. “The head of the Peace Preservation Corps is a running dog of the Japanese, a donkey belonging to the guerrilla forces, a rat hiding in a bellows, a person hated by both sides. Why did you accept the job?”

“That’s shit! What you’re saying is pure shit!” Sima Ting defended himself. “Only a damned idiot would take on the job willingly. The Japanese stuck a bayonet up against my belly. Through Ma Jin-long, the interpreter, their commander said, ‘Your younger brother Sima Ku joined the bandit Sha Yueliang to burn a bridge and launch an ambush. They inflicted heavy casualties on the Imperial Army. At first we planned to burn down your residence, Felicity Manor, but since you seem like a reasonable man, we have spared you.’ So you are one of the reasons I am the new head of the Peace Preservation Corps.”

Sima Ku, having lost the argument, cursed angrily, “This goddamned ass of mine, I wonder if it will ever heal.”

“I’d be happy if it never healed,” Sima Ting said heatedly. “You’ll give me a lot less trouble that way.” Turning to leave, he spotted a smiling Sha Yueliang standing at the door. Yao Si stepped forward, but before he could make the introductions, Sha announced, “Corps Head Sima, I am Sha Yueliang.”

Sima Ku rolled over in bed before his brother could react. “I’ll be damned, so you’re Sha Yueliang, nicknamed Sha the Monk.”

“At present I am the commander of the Black Donkey Musket Band,” Sha replied. “My thanks to the Sima brothers for setting the bridge on fire. You and I, hand in glove.”

“So you’re still alive, are you? What sort of birdshit battles are you fighting these days?”

“Ambushes!” Sha said.

“Ambushes, is it? If not for me and my torch, you’d have been trampled into the mud!” Sima Ku said.

“I have a salve for treating burns,” Sha said with a broad smile. “I’ll have one of my men bring it over.”

“Lay out some food,” Sima Ting instructed Yao Si, “to welcome Commander Sha.”

Yao Si replied timidly, “All our money went to set up the Peace Preservation Corps.”

“How stupid can you be?” Sima Ting said. “The Imperial Army doesn’t serve our family alone, it serves eight hundred households. And the musket band was raised not for our family, but for all the citizens of the township. Get every family to contribute some food and money, since these men are the people’s guests. We’ll supply the wine and liquor.”

“Corps Head Sima serves two masters well, and gains equally from both.”

“What can I do?” Sima Ting pleaded. “As old Pastor Malory said, ‘Who will go to Hell, if not me?’“

Pastor Malory took the lid of his pot and dumped noodles made of the new flour into the boiling water, then stirred them with chopsticks before replacing the lid. “The fire needs to be a little hotter,” he shouted to Mother, who nodded and stuffed more golden, fragrant wheat stalks into the belly of the stove. Without letting go of the nipple, I looked down at the flames licking out of the stove and listened to the stalks crackle and pop as I thought back to what had just happened: They had laid me in the basket – on my back at first, although I quickly rolled over onto my belly, so I could watch Mother roll the noodles. As her body moved up and down, those two full gourds on her chest bounced around, summoning me, passing me a secret sign. Sometimes they threw the two datelike heads together, as if kissing or whispering to one another. But most of the time they were bouncing up and down, bouncing and calling out, like a pair of happy white doves. I reached out to touch them, saliva oozing from my mouth. Then, all of a sudden, they turned bashful and edgy, as a blush fell over their faces and delicate pearls of sweat streamed down the valley between them. I saw a pair of blue lights dancing on them; they were spots of light from Pastor Malory’s eyes. Then two hands with blond hair reached out from the blue eyes to take my food from me, sending yellow flames leaping from my heart. I opened my mouth to cry, but that only made things worse. The tiny hands retreated back into Malory’s eyes, but the big hands attached to his arms reached out to Mother’s chest. He stood tall and massive behind her; those ugly hands reached around and covered the two white doves. He stroked their feathers with his coarse fingers, then pinched and scissored their heads. My poor gourds! My precious doves! They struggled to free their wings, then tucked them close to their bodies, close and tight, until they were as small as they were ever going to get, before pumping themselves up and spreading their wings, as if wanting desperately to fly away, all the way to the far ends of the wilderness, to the edge of the sky, floating gently up to be with the clouds, bathed by the winds and stroked by the sun, then to moan with the wind and sing with the sun, and finally to sink silently earthward and disappear into the depths of a lake. Loud wails burst from my throat; a river of tears clouded my eyes. Mother and Malory’s bodies writhed in unison, Mother moaned softly. “Let me go, you donkey. The baby’s crying.” “The little bastard,” Malory said resentfully.

Mother picked me up and rocked me nervously. “Precious,” she said sheepishly, “my son, what have I done to my own flesh and blood?” She stuck the white doves up under my nose, and I urgently, cruelly grabbed one of their heads with my lips. Big as my mouth was, I wished it were bigger still. It was like the mouth of a snake, and all I could think of was how to wrap it around my very own dove to keep it away from others. “Slow down, my baby.” Mother gently patted my bottom. I had one of them in my mouth and was grasping the other in my hands. It was a little red-eyed white rabbit, and when I pinched its ear, I felt its frantic heartbeat. “The little bastard,” Malory said with a sigh.

“Stop calling him a little bastard,” Mother said.

“That’s what he is,” Malory said.

“I’d like you to baptize him, then give him a name. This is his hundredth day.”

As he prepared the dough with a practiced hand, Malory said, “Baptize him? I’ve forgotten how. I’m making you noodles the way I learned from that Muslim woman.”

“How close were you two?” Mother asked him.

“We were just friends.”

“I don’t believe you!” Mother said.

Malory laughed hoarsely as he stretched and pulled the soft dough, then smacked it down on the chopping board. “Tell me!” Mother insisted. He smacked the dough again, then stretched and pulled it some more. Some of the time he pulled it like a bowstring and some of the time it looked as if he were pulling a snake out of its hole. Even Mother was surprised that a Westerner with such coarse hands could manage this Chinese action with such practiced dexterity. “Maybe,” he said, “I’m not Swedish after all, and my so-called past has been nothing but a dream. What do you think?” Mother smiled coldly. “I asked about you and that dark-eyed woman. Don’t change the subject.” Pastor Malory laid the dough out straight, as if this were all a childish game, then began waving it in and out, taut one moment and slack the next. The strawlike dough began to spiral and form a bundle; then, with a flick of his wrists, it fanned out like a horse’s tail. Mother praised his display of skill: “It takes a good woman to make noodles like that.” “All right,” Malory said, “young mother, stop those crazy thoughts. Once you get the fire going, I’ll cook these for you.” “And after we’re finished eating?” “After we’re finished, I’ll baptize the little bastard and give him a name.”

With a feigned show of anger, Mother said, “The real bastards are the sons you had with that Muslim woman.”

Mother’s words hung in the air as, in another place, Sha Yueliang and Sima Ting made a toast. They had reached the following agreement during the banquet: The donkeys belonging to the musket band would be stabled at the church; the men would be quartered with local families; and Sha Yueliang would personally choose a headquarters site after the meal.

Sha and four bodyguards followed Yao Si into our compound. My eldest sister, Laidi, caught his eye immediately as she stood beside the water vat casually combing her hair and gazing at her reflection in the water, white clouds in the blue sky as her backdrop. Having just passed through a peaceful summer with plenty to eat and nice clothes to wear, she had matured dramatically. Her breasts jutted out proudly, her once dry, brittle hair now had a dark sheen, her waist had narrowed and become soft and springy, and her buttocks curved upwards. In a hundred days she had shed the skin of a scrawny adolescent and been transformed into a lovely young woman, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. She had Mother’s high, fair nose, as well as her full breasts and lively buttocks. Rays of melancholy issued from the eyes of the lovely yet bashful young virgin as she gazed into the water vat and stroked her silken locks with a wooden comb, her graceful reflection displaying myriad melancholies. Sha Yueliang was shaken to the depths of his soul. “This will be the headquarters of the Black Donkey Musket Band,” he said decisively to Yao Si. “Shangguan Laidi,” Yao Si called out, “where’s your mother?” Sha dismissed Yao with a wave of his hand before the girl could answer. He walked up to the water vat and looked long and hard at Laidi. She returned the look. “Remember me, girl?” he asked. She nodded, her cheeks reddening.

My sister then turned and ran into the house. After the fifth day of the fifth month, my seven sisters had moved into the room once occupied by Shangguan Lü and Shangguan Fulu. Their former room was now being used to store three thousand catties of millet. Sha Yueliang followed Laidi into the house, where he saw the other six girls asleep on the kang. With a friendly smile, he said, “Don’t be afraid, we’re anti-Japanese fighters who bring no harm to the local populace. You have seen how we fight. That was a heroic battle, heroic and tragic, fiercely fought, the glory of the ages, and the day will come when people act out our exploits and sing our praises.” Eldest Sister lowered her head and twisted the tip of her braid as she recalled the uncommon events of the fifth day of the fifth month, how the man standing in front of her now had peeled away, strip by strip, the tattered remnants of his uniform. “Little girl – no, young mistress, we are linked by fate!” he announced before walking back outside. My sister followed him as far as the doorway and watched him first enter the side room to the east, then the room to the west. In the west room he was startled by the green light in the eyes of Shangguan Lü. Holding his nose, he quickly backed out of the room and gave an order to his troops: “Make some room by stacking the grain and find me a place to sleep.” My sister leaned up against the doorframe as she observed this skinny, stooped, dark-skinned man who looked like a scholar tree that had been struck by lightning. “Where is your father?” he asked her. Yao Si, who was lying low next to the wall, replied solicitously, “Her father was killed on the fifth day of the fifth month by the Jap devils – no, I mean the Imperial Army. Her grandfather, Shangguan Fulu, died the same day.”

“Imperial Army, did you say? Japs! Little Jap devils!” Sha

Yueliang roared, stomping his foot to express his loathing. “Young mistress,” he said, “your debt of vengeance, deep as a sea of blood, is our debt, and we will exact it one day, that I promise you. Who is the head of your family now?”

“Shangguan Lu,” Yao Si answered for her.

Meanwhile, Eighth Sister and I were being baptized.

The door of Pastor Malory’s residence opened directly onto the church, where faded oil paintings hung on the wall. Most were of naked winged infants, plump as fat yams. It wasn’t until later that I learned they were called angels. At the far end stood a brick pulpit, a carving from a heavy piece of jujube of a bare-chested man hanging in front. Owing either to the poor skills of the carver or to the hardness of the wood, the hanging man didn’t look much like a man at all. I later learned that it was our Lord Jesus, an amazing hero, a true saint. A dozen or so dusty pews, replete with bird droppings, were scattered here and there in front of the pulpit. Mother walked in with me in one arm and Eighth Sister in the other, startling the resident sparrows, which flew off and banged into the windows. The church’s front door opened onto the street. Through the cracks in the door, Mother could see a number of black donkeys shuttling back and forth outside.

Pastor Malory was holding a large wooden basin half filled with hot water in which a loofah floated. Steam rose from the basin, through which his slitted eyes showed. Bent over by the weight of the basin, he walked unsteadily, his neck thrust out. When he stumbled, water splashed into his face. But he regained his balance and shuffled on, until he was able to place the baptismal basin on the pulpit.

Mother walked up and handed us to him. He placed me in the basin, my feet curling inward the moment they touched the hot water. My tearful cries reverberated in the dreary emptiness of the church. Baby swallows in a white nest in the rafters craned their necks over the edge to watch me with their black, beady eyes; just then their parents flew in through one of the broken windows with worms in their broad beaks. After handing me back to Mother, Malory knelt and stirred the water with one of his large hands. The jujube Lord Jesus observed us warmly from where he hung. The angels on the walls were chasing the sparrows from the beams to the crossbeams, from the eastern wall to the western wall, from the spiral wooden staircase up to the rickety bell tower, and from the bell tower back down to the walls, where they rested. Crystalline beads of sweat oozed from their glistening buttocks. The water swirled in the basin, creating a little eddy in the center. Malory tested the water with his hand. “Okay,” he said, “it has cooled down. Put him in.”

They had taken off my clothes; Mother’s plentiful, nutritious milk had made me fat and fair-skinned. If I’d changed my look of sadness into one of anger or I’d worn a solemn smile, and if I’d had a pair of wings on my back, I’d have been an angel, and those fat little infants on the walls would have been my brothers. I stopped crying as soon as Mother laid me in the basin, because the water was so comfortably warm. I sat up and played in the water, shrieking happily as it splashed all over the place. Malory fished his bronze crucifix out of the water and pressed it down on my head. “From this moment on,” he said, “you are one of God’s beloved sons. Hallelujah!” Then he picked up the water-laden loofah and squeezed it over my head. “Hallelujah!” Mother parroted Malory: “Hallelujah!” she said, and I laughed joyfully as the holy water bathed my head.

Mother was beaming as she laid Eighth Sister in the basin with me, then picked up the loofah and gently washed us both as Pastor Malory ladled water over our heads. I shrieked happily with each ladleful, while Eighth Sister sobbed hoarsely. I kept grabbing my dark, scrawny twin.

“They don’t have names yet,” Mother said. “That’s your job.”

Pastor Malory put down his ladle. “This is nothing to be taken lightly. I need time to think.”

“My mother-in-law said that if I have a boy I should call him Little Dog Shangguan,” Mother said. “He would grow up better with a humble name.”

Pastor Malory shook his head vigorously. “No, that’s no good. Names like dog or cat are an affront to God. They also go against the teachings of Confucius, who said, ‘Without proper names, language cannot speak the truth.’“

“I have one,” Mother said. “See what you think. We can call him Shangguan Amen.”

Malory laughed. “That is even worse. Stop trying, and let me think.”

Pastor Malory stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, and began pacing feverishly in the rank atmosphere of the run-down church. His quick steps were the outward manifestation of the churning in his head, through which all manner of names and symbols – ancient and modern, Chinese and Western, heavenly and mundane – flowed. As she observed his pacing, Mother smiled and said to me, “Look at your godfather. That’s no way to think up a name. He looks like he’s about to declare a death.” Humming to herself, Mother picked up Malory’s ladle, scooped up some water, and poured it over our heads.

“I’ve got it!” he announced loudly as he stopped in his twenty-ninth trip to the closed front door of the church. “What will it be?” Mother asked excitedly. But before he could tell her, there was a clamor at the door. The noise of a crowd erupted, making the door rattle. Someone out there was shouting and carrying on. Mother stood up, seized with terror, the ladle still in her hand. Malory put his eye up to the crack in the door. At the time we didn’t know what was happening, but we saw his face redden, either from anger or nervousness, we didn’t know which. He turned to Mother. “Leave, quickly. To the courtyard out front.”

Mother bent down to pick me up. She first threw away the ladle, of course, which bounced around noisily on the floor, like a bullfrog in mating season. Left behind in the basin, Eighth Sister began to bawl. The bolt snapped in two and clattered to the floor as the double doors burst open, and a shaven-headed young man holding a musket exploded into the church. He butted Malory in the chest, sending him reeling back all the way to the rear wall. A bare-bottomed angel was suspended above his head. When the door bolt clattered to the floor, I tumbled out of Mother’s arms and thudded back into the basin, sending a spray of water skyward and nearly crushing the life out of Eighth Sister.

Altogether five musket soldiers swarmed in, but their brutal arrogance dissolved as they took in the sights of the church. The one who had nearly butted Pastor Malory into the next world scratched his head. “There are people here. Why is that?” He glanced at his four comrades. “Didn’t they say the church had been abandoned years ago? How come there are people here?”

Covering his chest with his hands, Malory walked up to the soldiers, who were frightened and embarrassed by his dignified appearance. If he had spewed forth a string of foreign words and made a flurry of hand gestures, the soldiers might well have turned on their heels and run out of the church. Even speaking Chinese with a heavy foreign accent would have stopped them from turning violent. But the unfortunate Pastor Malory spoke to them in perfect Northeast Gaomi Chinese: “What do you want, my brothers?” He bowed deeply to them.

As I lay there crying – Eighth Sister had stopped crying by then – the soldiers burst out laughing. Sizing up Pastor Malory as if he were a performing monkey, a soldier with a crooked mouth reached out and tickled the hairs in Malory’s ear with his finger.

“A monkey, ha ha, he’s a monkey.” His comrades joined in: “Look, this monkey’s even hiding a woman in here!”

“I object!” Malory shouted. “I object! I am a foreigner!”

“A foreigner, did you all hear that?” the crooked-mouthed soldier said. “Are you telling me a foreigner can speak perfect Northeast Gaomi Chinese? I think you’re the bastard offspring of a monkey and a human. Bring in one of the donkeys, men.”

Holding Eighth Sister and me in her arms, Mother came up and grabbed Malory’s arm. “Let’s go, we don’t want to anger them.”

Malory pulled his arm free and ran up to push the donkey back out of the church. The animal bared its teeth, like an angry dog, and brayed loudly.

“Back off!” one of the soldiers demanded as he pushed Malory out of the way.

“The church is a holy place, belonging to God. You can’t stable a donkey in here,” Pastor Malory said defiantly.

“You phony foreign devil!” cursed one of the soldiers, a man with a pale face and purple lips. “My old mother told me that that man,” he said as he pointed to the jujube Jesus hanging up front, “was born in a horse stable. Donkeys are cousins to horses, so if your god owes a debt to horses, he also owes one to donkeys. If a horse stable can serve as a delivery room, then why can’t a church serve as a donkey’s pen?”

The soldier, obviously pleased with his powers of logic, stared at Malory with a smug grin.

Malory made the sign of the cross and began to weep. “Punish these evil men, Lord. Strike them down with lightning, let them be bitten by poisonous vipers, let them perish at the hands of the Japanese

“Traitorous dog!” the crooked-mouthed soldier snarled, giving Malory a resounding slap. Intending to slap him in the mouth, he was slightly off target, hitting his hooked nose instead, and releasing a gush of fresh blood. With a painful cry, Malory raised his hands toward the jujube Jesus. “Lord,” he intoned, “almighty God…”

The soldiers looked first at the jujube Jesus, which was covered with dust and bird droppings, then at the bloodied face of Pastor Malory. Finally, they let their eyes roam over Mother’s body, which was covered with slimy marks that looked like the trails of snails. The soldier who knew about Jesus’ birthplace stuck out his tongue, like a footed clam, and licked his purplish lips. By then, twenty-eight black donkeys had been crowded into the church. Some moved around aimlessly, others scratched their backs on the walls or relieved themselves or misbehaved themselves, and some nibbled at the clay walls. “Lord!” Malory implored. But his Lord was unmoved.

In their anger they ripped Eighth Sister and me out of Mother’s arms and tossed us among the donkeys. Mother ran to us like a she-wolf, but was stopped by the soldiers before she reached us. That is when they began fooling around with Mother, starting with crooked mouth, who reached out and grabbed one of her breasts. Purple lips crowded up and pushed crooked mouth out of the way to wrap his hands around my doves, my precious gourds. With a loud screech, Mother clawed his face; unfazed and grinning his evil grin, he ripped off her clothes.

What happened after that will remain my secret anguish for the rest of my life. Out in the yard, Sha Yueliang was cozying up to my eldest sister, while in the eastern side room, Gou San and his pack of mongrels spread out a bunch of straw in a corner for beds; all five of the musket soldiers – the team assigned to watch the donkeys – threw Mother down on top of it. On the floor among the donkeys, Eighth Sister and I had by then cried ourselves hoarse. Malory jumped up, grabbed one of the broken halves of the door bolt, and brought it down on a soldier’s head. One of his comrades aimed at Malory’s legs and fired. An explosion tore through the room as a swarm of buckshot thudded into Malory’s legs, spraying pearls of blood into the air. The broken bolt fell from his hands and he slumped to the floor; he looked up at the bird-splattered jujube Jesus and began to murmur something in his long-forgotten Swedish tongue, the words fluttering from his mouth like butterflies. The soldiers took turns ravaging Mother; the donkeys took turns sniffing Eighth Sister and me. Their loud brays crashed through the ceiling of the church and flew up into the bleak sky. Sweat beaded the face of the jujube Jesus. Satisfied, the soldiers tossed Mother, Eighth Sister, and me out into the street; the donkeys followed us outside, but ran off following the scent of female donkeys. While the soldiers were trying to run down their mounts, Pastor Malory dragged his buckshot-honeycombed legs up the familiar, foot-worn stairs to the bell tower. He managed to prop himself up by holding on to the windowsill so he could gaze out through the broken stained glass and see the panorama of Dalan, the municipal seat of Northeast Gaomi, where he had lived and left his mark for decades: neat rows of thatch-roofed cottages; wide, gray-colored lanes; misty green treetops; shimmering rivers and streams circling tiny villages; the mirrorlike surface of the lake; the swaying thickets of reeds; pools of water rimmed by wild grasses; the red marsh that was a playground for passing birds; an expanse of open country that scrolled all the way to the edge of heaven; the golden yellow Reclining Ox mountain range; the sandy hills, with their flowering locusts… as his gaze traveled down to the street, where Mother lay like a dead fish, her naked belly exposed to the sky, deep sorrow filled his heart and tears clouded his eyes. Dipping his finger in the blood oozing from his legs, he wrote four words on the gray wall of the bell tower: Golden Boy Jade Girl.

Then he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Forgive me, dear Lord!”

Pastor Malory flung himself off the bell tower and plummeted like a gigantic bird with broken wings, splattering his brains like so much bird shit when he hit the street below.

3

Winter was approaching, and Mother began wearing her mother-in-law’s blue satin-lined jacket. Four old village women, who were blessed with many sons and grandsons, had come over on Grandmother’s sixtieth birthday to sew this jacket, which she would one day wear in her coffin. But now it was Mother’s winter jacket. Mother cut two holes in the top, so she could free her breasts anytime I was hungry. They had been ravaged during that infuriating autumn, when Pastor Malory leaped to his death, but the calamity would pass, and her fine breasts would prove to be indestructible. They were like people who are forever young or evergreen pines. To keep them from prying eyes and, more importantly, to protect them from the chill winds and keep their milk warm, Mother sewed red flaps over the holes. Her inventiveness started a tradition; flapped lined jackets are still worn in Dalan to this day, although the holes now are rounder, the flaps made of softer material, and they are embroidered with bright flowers.

My winter clothing was a thick pouch fashioned from durable canvas and lined with a drawstring at the top and two straps from which it hung just beneath Mother’s bosom. When it was feeding time, she would suck in her belly and shift the pouch until I was perfectly positioned: cradled in a kneeling position, my head nestled up against her breasts. Then, by turning my head to the right, I could put my mouth around her left nipple; by turning it to the left, I could nurse from her right nipple. It was a double-sided advantage worthy of the name. But my pouch wasn’t perfect, for it bound up my hands, and made it impossible to hold one breast while I was nursing at the other, as I had done in the past. By then I had completely stripped Eighth Sister of her right to nurse, and anytime she came near one of Mother’s breasts, I clawed and kicked until the poor blind thing cried her eyes out. She survived on a thin gruel, and this made my other sisters very unhappy.

My nursing process over the long winter months was shrouded in anxiety, for when my lips were wrapped around the left nipple, all I could think about was the right one. I felt as if a hairy hand would suddenly reach into the cavernous opening and take the temporarily idle breast away with it. Falling under the control of that feeling, I’d quickly switch nipples, leaving the left one, from which milk had just begun to flow, for the right one; but I’d no sooner begun to suck there than I’d switch back to the left. Mother would give me a puzzled look, seeing how I would suck from the left but never take my greedy eyes off the right, and quickly guessing what I was up to. Showering my face with kisses from her chilled lips, she would say softly, Jintong, Golden Boy, my little treasure, all Mama’s milk belongs to you, and no one can take it away from you. Her words lessened my anxiety, but didn’t drive it away altogether, for I could sense those hairy hands all around her, just waiting for an opening.

One morning, as a light snow fell, Mother put on her nursing blouse and strapped me onto her back, where I was kept warm in the cotton wrap. She told my sisters to move the red-skinned turnips into the cellar. Not knowing, or caring, where those turnips had come from, what attracted me to them was their shape: pointy tips that swelled out to the base made me hungry for the tit. And so, large red turnips were added to oily gourds, with their shiny skins, and sleek, white little doves. Each had its unique color, its aura, and its degree of warmth, and each was like a woman’s breast in one way or another. They came to symbolize breasts, each belonging to a different season and a different mood.

The sky was clear one minute and cloudy the next; snowflakes swirled one second and disappeared the next. My sisters, all wearing thin clothing, scrunched their necks down between their shoulders as chilled northern winds blew past them. My eldest sister was responsible for putting the turnips into baskets; Second and Third Sisters were responsible for carrying the baskets; Fourth and Fifth Sisters were responsible for stacking them in the cellar; Sixth and Seventh Sisters were free to help out here and there; and Eighth Sister, not yet old enough to do any work, sat alone on the kang deep in thought. Sixth Sister stacked the turnips four at a time, all the way to the cellar opening; Seventh Sister did the same, but two at a time. Meanwhile, Mother and her little Golden Boy toured the area among the piles of turnips, ordering the girls around, criticizing them for less-than-perfect work, and heaving sighs of emotion. Mother’s commands were intended to raise the quality of work, to keep the turnips healthy and allow them to get safely through the winter. Her sighs represented the central thought in her head: Life is hard, and the only way to survive is through hard work. My sisters reacted passively to Mother’s commands, unhappily to her criticisms, and apathetically to her sighs. To this day I’m not sure how so many turnips appeared in our compound, as if by magic; but what I eventually came to understand was why Mother took such pains to stockpile that winter.

When the stacking work was finished, a dozen or so small turnips of varying shapes, all resembling human breasts, remained on the floor. Mother knelt down at the cellar opening, bent over, reached down, and pulled Xiangdi and Pandi up through the hole, one at a time. During the process, I was turned upside down twice; each time I looked out under Mother’s armpit and caught a glimpse of snowflakes swirling in the hazy, gray sunlight. The last thing Mother did was move a cracked water vat – now filled with cotton batting and grain husks – to cover the cellar hole. My sisters formed a line against the wall, beneath an overhead beam, as if awaiting Mother’s next command. But she just sighed. “What am I supposed to use to make padded clothes for you girls?” My third sister, Lingdi, said, “Cotton shells lined with cotton batting.” “You think I don’t know that?” Mother said. “What I mean is money – where am I going to get the money to buy the stuff?” My second sister, Zhaodi, said somewhat gloomily, “Sell the black donkey and the little mule.” “If I do that,” Mother said reproachfully, “how will we till the field next year?”

My eldest sister, Laidi, held her tongue the whole time, and when Mother glanced at her, she lowered her head. “Tomorrow,” Mother said to her anxiously, “you and Zhaodi can take the little mule into town and sell it.” My fifth sister, Pandi, said with a pout, “But it’s still nursing. Why don’t we sell some grain instead? We have plenty.” Mother glanced over at the open door of the eastern side room. A pair of cotton stockings belonging to Sha Yueliang, the leader of the band of soldiers, was drying on a clothesline.

The little mule bounded into the yard. It had been born on the same day as I, and it too was a male. But I could only stand up in the carrying cloth on my mother’s back, while it was already as tall as its mother. “Here’s what we’ll do,” Mother said before turning to walk back inside. “We’ll sell it tomorrow.” But from behind us came a crisp shout: “Adoptive mother!”

Sha Yueliang, who had been missing for three days, walked into the yard, leading his black donkey. A pair of bulging purple bundles lay across the donkey’s back, something colorful poking through the seams. “Adoptive mother!” he called out again, a tone of intimacy in his voice. Mother turned to see an awkward smile on the dark, gaunt face of the crooked-shouldered man. “Commander Sha,” Mother said insistently, “how many times have I told you I’m not your adoptive mother?” With the smile creasing his face unyieldingly, Sha replied, “No, you’re not, you’re more than that. I may not measure up in your eyes, but my filial obligations to you know no bounds.” He turned and ordered two of his soldiers to take the donkey over to the churchyard to feed it after unloading the bundles from its back. Mother stared venomously at the black donkey, and so did I. It flared its nostrils to take in the smell of our female donkey emanating from the western side room.

Sha opened one of the bundles and took out a foxskin overcoat. It shimmered when he shook it out in the falling snow, which melted from the garment’s heat as far away as three feet. “Adoptive mother,” he said as he walked up to Mother with the coat. “Please accept this gift from your adoptive son.” Mother shrank back hastily, but there was no way she could successfully avoid being wrapped in the foxskin coat. Darkness closed around me. The stink of the animal hide and the pungent odor of mothballs nearly suffocated me.

By the time I could see again, the yard had turned into an animal world. A purple marten coat was draped over the shoulders of my eldest sister, Laidi, and a bright-eyed fox was wrapped around her neck. My second sister, Zhaodi, was wrapped in a weasel coat. A black bear coat was draped over the shoulders of my third sister, Lingdi; a dark yellow roe deer coat was draped over the shoulders of my fourth sister, Xiangdi; a dogskin coat was draped over the shoulders of my fifth sister, Pandi; a lambskin coat was draped over the shoulders of my sixth sister, Niandi; and a rabbitskin coat was draped over the shoulders of my seventh sister, Qiudi. Mother’s foxskin coat lay on the ground. “Take those off, all of you!” she shouted. “Take them off!” My sisters acted as if they hadn’t heard her; with their heads swaying in the warmth of their collars, they reached out to touch the fur of one another’s coats. The looks on their faces showed that they were delighted to be immersed in such warmth, and that they felt warmed by their delight. As she stood there shivering, Mother said weakly, “Have you all turned deaf?”

Sha Yueliang removed the last two overcoats from one of the bundles and gently rubbed the black fur covering the brown satiny-sleek hide. “Adoptive mother,” he said emotionally, “these are lynx hides. There was only a single pair of them anywhere in a hundred-li radius of Northeast Gaomi. It took old man Geng and his son three years to catch them. This is the male, and this is the female. Have you ever seen a lynx?” His eyes swept the fur-clad girls. Since they didn’t answer, he told them about lynxes, like a schoolteacher lecturing his class. “The lynx is a cat, only larger, and resembles a leopard, only smaller. It can climb trees and it can swim. It can leap several feet in the air and is capable of snatching birds off the limbs of trees. It’s a very clever animal. This particular pair of lynxes lived amid Northeast Gaomi’s unmarked burial mounds, which made it harder to catch them than climbing to the sky. But, eventually, they were caught. Adoptive mother, these two jackets are my gifts to young brother Jintong and his twin sister.” With that, he laid out the two tiny jackets made from the lynxes, animals that when alive could climb trees, could swim, and could leap several feet in the air. He then bent over, picked up the flame-red foxskin coat, shook it out, and laid it too in the crook of Mother’s arm. “Adoptive mother,” he said with a catch in his voice, “please don’t make me lose face.”

After night fell, Mother bolted the door and called Laidi into our room. She laid me down at the head of the kang, alongside my twin sister. I reached out and scratched her face. She cried out and curled up in the corner, as far away from me as possible. Mother was too busy bolting the bedroom door to concern herself with us. My eldest sister was standing at the head of the kang, bundled in her purple marten coat, the fox stole around her neck, looking bashful and proud at the same time. Mother climbed onto the kang. Taking a silver hairpin from the bun at the back of her head, she picked the knot out of the lamp wick to make it shine brightly. Then she sat up straight and said in a taunting voice, “Sit down, young mistress. Don’t be afraid you’ll soil your new coat.” Laidi blushed and sat on a stool beside the kang, pouting to show she felt hurt. Her fur stole raised its sly chin; oily green lights shot out from her eyes.

The yard was Sha Yueliang’s world. Ever since he’d set up a bivouac in our eastern side room, our main gate was never closed all the way. On this particular night, there was a lot more going on in the eastern side room than usual. The bright light of a gas lantern shone through the paper covering of the window, lighting up the whole yard and adding a radiance to the snowflakes swirling in the air. People were running around; the gate kept creaking open and shut; and the crisp sound of donkey hooves clattered up and down the lane. Inside the room, husky male laughter burst into the night between shouts of their finger gambling: Three peach gardens! Five stalwart leaders! Seven plum blossoms and eight horses! The aroma of meat and fish drew my six sisters up to the window in the eastern room, where they leaned against the windowsill and drooled hungrily. Mother watched my eldest sister like a hawk, eyes blazing; Laidi returned the look with unyielding defiance. Blue sparks flew from the clash of gazes. “What are you thinking?” Mother demanded.

“What do you mean?” Laidi asked as she stroked the lush tail of the fox.

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Mother said.

“Mother,” Laidi said, “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

Changing her tone to one of sadness, Mother said, “Laidi, you’re the oldest of nine children, and if you get into trouble, who am I going to rely on?”

My sister jumped to her feet and, in an indignant tone I’d never heard from her before, said, “Just what do you expect of me, Mother? All you care about is Jintong. As far as you’re concerned, we girls aren’t worth as much as a pile of dog turds!”

“Laidi,” Mother said, “don’t change the subject. Jintong may be gold, but you girls are silver. So no more talk about dog turds! It’s time for mother and daughter to have a heart-to-heart talk. That fellow Sha is a weasel coming to the chickens with New Year’s greetings. He does not have good intentions. He has his eye on you for sure.”

Laidi lowered her head and stroked the foxtail again as tears glistened in her eyes. “Mother,” she said, “I’d be happy to marry a man like him.”

Mother reacted as if struck by lightning. “Laidi,” she said, “you have my blessings no matter whom you marry, just so long as it isn’t that Sha fellow.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you worry about why.”

With a hateful edge to her voice that seemed out of place for a girl her age, Laidi said, “The Shangguan family has worked me like a beast of burden long enough!”

The shrillness of her comment stunned Mother. Scrutinizing her daughter’s face, red with anger, she then glanced down at the hand stroking the foxtail. I felt her reach for something close by; it was the whiskbroom used to keep the kang neat. Raising it over her head, she screamed hysterically, “How dare you talk to me like that! Just see if I don’t beat you to death!”

Mother jumped off the kang, holding the whiskbroom high in the air. But instead of getting ready to duck the blow that was sure to come, Laidi raised her head defiantly, and Mother’s hand froze in midair; when it finally came down, there was no steam behind it. Letting the whiskbroom fall to the floor, Mother threw her arms around my sister’s neck and sobbed, “Laidi, we and that fellow Sha live in two different worlds. I can’t sit by and watch my own daughter throw herself into a burning pyre…”

By then, Laidi was sobbing too.

Once they’d cried themselves out, Mother dried my sister’s face with the back of her hand and implored her, “Laidi, give me your word you won’t have anything to do with that Sha fellow.”

But Laidi stood her ground. “Mother,” she said, “this is something I really want, and not just for me, but for the good of the family.” Out of the corner of her eye, Laidi looked down at the foxskin overcoat and the two little lynx jackets lying on the kang.

Mother too stood her ground. “I want you all to take off those coats tomorrow.”

“Don’t you even care if we freeze to death?” my sister said.

“A damned fur coat peddler is what he is,” Mother complained.

My sister unbolted the door and strode to her room without a backward glance.

Mother sat down feebly on the edge of the kang, and I heard raspy breaths coming up from her chest.

Then I heard Sha Yueliang’s hesitant footsteps outside the window. His tongue was thick and his lips seemed paralyzed; I knew he wanted to knock against the window frame and, in a tender voice, raise the subject of marriage. But alcohol had dulled his senses and made it impossible for his actions to match his desires. He banged on our window frame so loud and so hard that his hand tore through the paper covering, letting cold air from the outside pour in, along with the stench of alcohol on his breath. In the tone of voice so common to drunks – disgusting yet at the same time somehow endearing – he bellowed, “Mother -”

Mother jumped down off the kang and stood there sort of dazed for a moment, before climbing back up on the kang and dragging me over from beneath the window, where I’d been lying. “Mother,” Sha said, “Laidi and me, when can we be married… I’m not a patient man…”

Mother clenched her teeth. “You there, Sha,” she said, “like the toad who wants to feast on a swan, you can just dream on!” “What did you say?” Sha Yueliang asked her. “I said, dream on!”

As if he’d suddenly turned sober, Sha said without a trace of slurring, “Adoptive mother, I have never in my life begged anyone for anything.”

“Nobody’s asking you to beg me for anything.” With a snicker, he said, “Adoptive mother, I tell you that Sha Yueliang gets and does exactly what he wants…” “You’ll have to kill me first.”

“Given that I want to marry your daughter,” Sha said with a laugh, “how could I kill you, my future mother-in-law?” “Then you can forget about marrying my daughter.” Another laugh. “Your daughter is a grown woman, and you can no longer decide her fate. We shall see what happens, my dear mother-in-law.”

Sha walked up to the eastern window, poked a hole in the paper covering, and flung a handful of candy into the room. “Little sisters-in-law,” he shouted, “have some candy. As long as Sha Yueliang is around, you’ll eat sweets and drink spicy drinks along with me…”

Sha Yueliang did not sleep that night. Instead he walked around the yard and, except for an occasional cough or an outburst of whistling, which he did quite well, since he could imitate the voices of a dozen different birds, he sang arias from old operas or contemporary anti-Japanese songs at the top of his lungs. One minute he’d sing about Chen Shimei, the evil husband beheaded on the order of the angry Kaifeng magistrate, the next he’d bring his sword down on the neck of a Jap soldier. To keep this resistance hero, drunk on alcohol and love, from breaking into the room, Mother added a second bolt to the door, way up high, and, if that weren’t enough, stacked anything she could move, from a bellows to a wardrobe to a pile of broken bricks, up against the door. Then, after putting me safely on her back, she picked up a cleaver and paced the room from one end to the other, back and forth. None of my sisters took off her new fur coat; they huddled together, sweat beading the tips of their noses, as they slept amid the noise created by Sha. Drool from Qiudi’s mouth wetted Zhaodi’s marten coat; Niandi slept nestled up against Lingdi’s bearskin coat like a lamb. Now that I think back, Mother never stood a chance in her struggle with Sha Yueliang. He won over my sisters with his fur coats, and they formed a united front with him; having lost the support of the masses, Mother became a lone warrior.

The next day, with me on her back, Mother ran over to tell Third Master Fan that she’d decided that the best way to repay Aunty Sun for her midwifery was to marry Laidi to one of the mute sons of the Sun family – the hero of the battle with the crows. The day the decision was announced would begin their engagement; the dowry would be presented the next day; and the wedding would take place the day after that. Third Master Fan stared at Mother with a look of confusion in his eyes. “Uncle,” Mother said, “don’t worry about the details. I’ll take care of Matchmaker Xie.” “But this is doing things backward.” “Yes, it is,” Mother replied. “Why do it this way?” “Please, Uncle, don’t ask. Just have the mute come to our house at noon with his engagement gifts.” “What can he possibly have as gifts?” Third Master Fan asked. “Tell him to bring what he can,” Mother replied.

On the way home, I sensed Mother’s fear and deep anxiety. She’d been right to be worried. The minute we walked into the yard, we were confronted by a pack of animals, dancing and singing: a weasel, a black bear, a roe deer, a dog, a sheep, and a rabbit; the only one missing was a marten. The purple marten, a fox wrapped around its neck, was seated on sacks of grain in the eastern side room, staring at the commander, who was sitting on the floor cleaning his powder gourd and musket.

Mother dragged Laidi off the sacks of grain and announced icily, “Commander Sha, she has been promised to another. You resistance fighters aren’t the type to take another man’s wife, I presume.”

“That goes without saying,” Sha replied evenly.

Mother dragged my eldest sister out of the eastern side room.

At noon, the mute son of the Sun family showed up at our door carrying a wild rabbit. He was wearing a tiny padded jacket, with his belly showing below and his neck above; the sleeves barely covered half his thick arms. All the buttons were missing, so he used a hemp rope to hold up his trousers. He nodded and bowed to Mother, an idiotic grin creasing his face. He held the rabbit up to Mother in both hands. Third Master Fan, who had come with the mute, said, “Shangguan Shouxi’s widow, I’ve done as you asked.”

Mother looked down at the wild rabbit, a trickle of blood congealing at the corner of its mouth, and stood frozen to the spot. Then she pointed to the mute son of the Sun family and said, “Uncle, I’d like the two of you to stick around. Don’t go home yet. We’ll stew the rabbit with some carrots for an engagement dinner.”

Laidi’s wails erupted in the eastern room. At first she sounded like a little girl crying, shrill and childish. That lasted a few minutes, and was quickly replaced by throaty, jagged wails wrapped around a succession of frightful, filthy curses. After about ten minutes, when the moisture was gone, those gave way to arid, brittle cries.

Laidi was sitting on the dirt floor of the eastern room, in front of the kang, soiling her precious coat, and not caring. She was staring straight ahead, no tears on her face, her mouth hanging slack and looking like a dried-up well. Arid-brittle cries were emerging from that dried-up well, endlessly. My six other sisters were sobbing softly, tears rolling over a bear hide, dancing atop a roe deer hide, shimmering on a weasel hide, wetting a sheep hide, and soiling a rabbit hide.

Third Master Fan stuck his head in the door; as if he’d seen a ghost, his eyes bugged out and his lips twitched. He backed out of the room, turned, and stumbled off as fast as he could.

The mute son of the Sun family stood in our living room, twisting his neck to gaze curiously at everything within eyesight. Besides the idiotic grin, the expression on his face revealed a host of impenetrable thoughts, a fossilized bleakness, a numb sorrow. Eventually, I even spotted a fearful expression of rage on that face.

Mother ran a wire through the rabbit’s mouth and hung it from a rafter. The wails of terror from my eldest sister fell on deaf ears. The mute’s strange expression did not register with Mother, who attacked the rabbit with her chipped, rusty cleaver. Sha Yueliang walked out of the eastern side room, his musket slung over his back. Without even looking up, Mother said icily, “Commander Sha, today is my eldest daughter’s engagement day, and this rabbit is the engagement gift.”

“What an extravagant gift,” Sha Yueliang said with a laugh. Mother chopped down on the rabbit’s head. “Today she is engaged, tomorrow the dowry will be settled, and the day after that she will be married.” Mother turned and stared at Sha Yueliang. “Don’t forget to join us at the wedding banquet!” “How could I forget?” Sha replied. “I definitely will not forget.” He then turned and walked out through the gate with his musket, whistling a loud tune.

Mother continued skinning the rabbit, although it was clear her heart was not in it. When she finished, she hung it over the doorway and went inside, with me on her back and the cleaver in her hand. “Laidi!” she shouted. “The bonds between parent and child are formed by enmity and kindness. Go ahead, hate me!” This angry outburst was barely out of her mouth when she began to weep silently. As tears wet her face and her shoulders heaved, she sliced the turnips. Ke-chunk! The first turnip separated into two white, greenish halves. Ke-chunk! Four halves. Ke-chunk! Ke-chunk! Ke-chunk! Faster and faster Mother sliced, her actions more and more exaggerated. The now dismembered turnips lay on the cutting board. Mother raised her cleaver one more time; it nearly floated down as it left her hand and landed on the pile of dismembered turnips. The room was suffused with their acrid smell.

The mute son of the Sun family gave Mother a respectful thumbs-up along with a series of grunts. Mother dried her eyes with her sleeve and said to him, “You can leave now.” He waved his arms and kicked out with his feet. Raising her voice, Mother pointed in the direction of his home. “You can leave now. I want you to leave!”

Finally grasping Mother’s meaning, he made a face at me; the mustache atop his puffy upper lip looked like a swipe of green paint. First he made as if to climb a tree, then he made as if to fly like a bird, and finally he made as if he had a struggling little bird in his hand. He smiled as he pointed to me, and then pointed to his chest, over his heart.

Once again, Mother pointed in the direction of his home. He froze for a moment, then nodded in understanding. Falling to his knees before Mother – who quickly backed out of the way, so that he was now facing the sliced turnips on the cutting board – he banged his head against the floor in a kowtow. He then got to his feet and walked off proudly.

Worn out by all the activity of the day, Mother slept soundly that night. When she awoke the next morning, she saw wild rabbits hanging from the parasol tree, the cedar tree, and the apricot tree in the yard, as if laden with exotic fruits.

Holding on to the frame of the door, she sat down slowly on the threshold.

Wearing her marten coat, the red foxskin wrapped around her neck, eighteen-year-old Shangguan Laidi ran off with the leader of the Black Donkey Musket Band, Sha Yueliang, taking the black mule with them. Those wild rabbits were Sha Yueliang’s engagement gift to my mother, as well as a display of his arrogance. My second, third, and fourth sisters were accomplices in First Sister’s plan to run away. It was carried out in the middle of the night, while Mother was snoring loudly, deep in an exhausted sleep, and my fifth, sixth, and seventh sisters were fast asleep. Second Sister climbed out of bed; walking barefoot, she groped her away over to the door and removed the objects Mother had piled up behind it, after which my third and fourth sisters opened the double doors. Earlier that evening, Sha Yueliang had oiled the hinges with rifle grease, so the doors swung open without a sound. Standing under the cold, late-night moonbeams, the girls hugged each other and said their good-byes. Sha Yueliang grinned furtively at the rabbits hanging from the trees.

The day after that was to be the mute’s and my eldest sister’s wedding day. Mother sat on the edge of the kang, silently patching clothes with needle and thread. Just before noon, the mute, unable to curb his impatience, showed up. Using hand gestures and facial expressions, he signaled Mother that he had come to fetch his woman. Mother stepped down off the kang, pointed to the eastern side room, then to the trees in the yard, where the rabbits, now frozen stiff, still hung. She didn’t have to say a word – the mute understood exactly what had happened.

That evening, we all sat around the kang eating turnip slices and slurping wheat congee, when we heard someone pounding on the gate. Second Sister, who had gone over to the western side room to take food to Shangguan Lü, ran in and announced breathlessly, “Mother, there’s trouble. The mute and his brothers are at the gate, and they’ve brought a pack of dogs with them.” My sisters were thrown into a panic, but Mother sat there calmly feeding my twin sister Yunü – Jade Girl – then turned her attention back to the turnip slices, which she chewed loudly. She looked as calm as a pregnant rabbit. The commotion outside the gate died out as suddenly as it had arisen. In about the time it takes to smoke a pipeful, three dark, red-faced figures clambered over the wall on the south edge of the yard. It was the three mute brothers of the Sun family. Three black dogs, their glistening coats looking as if they had been smeared with lard, entered the yard with them. They glided over the wall like black rainbows and landed noiselessly on the ground. The mutes and their dogs froze for a moment in the deep red sunset, like statues. The eldest held a glistening Burmese sword; the second wore a blue steel hunting knife at his waist; and the third carried a large, rusty short-handled sword. They all had little cotton bundles – blue with white flowers – over their shoulders, like men about to set off on a long journey. My sisters sucked in their breath fearfully, but Mother sat calmly slurping her congee. Without warning, the eldest mute roared, followed by his two brothers, and then the dogs. Spittle from human and canine mouths danced in the dying rays of the sun like glowing insects. The mutes then made a show of their skill with their knives and swords, a reprise of their battle with the crows during the funeral in the wheat field. On that winter evening, knives and swords flashed as three stocky men, looking a bit like hunting dogs, leaped into the air, stretching their bodies as far as they’d go to hack at dozens of dead rabbits hanging from the trees in our yard. Their frenzied dogs howled and swung their big heads around as they flung the rabbits’ broken corpses right and left. When the men finished, our yard was littered with dismembered rabbits. A few lonely rabbit heads still hung from branches, like unpicked, wind-dried fruit. Leading their dogs, the satisfied mutes strutted around the yard a few times in a show of authority before skimming over the wall like swallows, the same way they’d entered, and disappearing in the gloom of falling night.

Holding her bowl out in front of her, Mother smiled slightly. That singular smile burned its way into our heads.

4

The first signs of aging in a woman appear on her breasts and work their way from the nipples backward. After our sister eloped, Mother’s pink nipples, which had always jutted out playfully, suddenly sagged, like ripe tassels of grain. At the same time, the pink turned to date red. During those days, her output of milk fell off, and it wasn’t nearly as fresh or fragrant or sweet as it had been. In fact, the now anemic milk tasted a little like rotting wood. Happily, the passage of time gradually improved her mood, especially after eating a big eel, which sparked a resurgent rise in her sagging nipples and a lightening of the color. But the deep wrinkles that appeared at the base of each nipple, like creases in the pages of a book, were disturbing; granted they were now smoothed out, yet an indelible trace of the indentation remained. This sounded a warning to me; thanks to instinct, or maybe divine intervention, a change in my reckless, indulgent attitude toward breasts occurred. I knew I must treasure them, conserve and protect them, treat them with the care due to the exquisite containers they were.

The winter that year was unusually bitter, but we moved safely and confidently toward spring, thanks to half a room filled with wheat and a cellar piled high with turnips. During the coldest days, heavy snowfalls sealed us inside, while outside, tree branches snapped under the wet accumulation. Wearing the fur coats Sha Yueliang had given us, we huddled around Mother and fell into a sort of hibernation. Then the sun came out one day and began to melt the snow; as large icicles formed beneath the eaves and sparrows reappeared, chirping for us from branches in the yard, we stirred from our wintry slumber. My sisters experienced deep revulsion over the melted snow on which we had relied for so long, and the same meal of turnips boiled in snow water, over and over, hundreds of times. My second sister, Zhaodi, was the first to mention that the snow this year carried the smell of raw blood, and if we didn’t hurry down to the river to draw fresh water, we might all come down with some strange illness, and that not even Jintong, who survived on mother’s milk, would be spared. By this time, Zhaodi had quite naturally taken over Laidi’s leadership role. This particular sister had thick, fleshy lips and spoke with a husky voice that oozed appeal. She became the voice of authority, since she’d assumed complete responsibility for meal preparation as soon as winter closed in, while Mother sat on the kang shy as a wounded milk cow, occasionally wrapping herself in the precious fox fur, as she should, so as to stay warm and ensure the continued flow of high-quality milk in her breasts. With a look at Mother, my second sister said imperiously, “Starting today, we will fetch our water from the river.” Mother did not object. My third sister, Lingdi, frowned and complained about the taste of the turnips boiled in snow water, and repeated her suggestion that we sell the donkey and use the money to buy some meat. “We’re surrounded by ice and snow,” Mother said sarcastically, “so where do you suggest we go to sell it?” “Then let’s go catch some wild rabbits,” Third Sister said. “With all this ice and snow they’re so cold they can hardly move.” Mother blanched in anger. “Children, remember one thing. I don’t ever want to see another wild rabbit as long as I live.”

In fact, there were many people in the village who grew tired of eating wild rabbit over that bitter winter. The plump little rabbits crawled across the snowy ground like maggots, so lethargic even women with bound feet easily caught them. These were golden days for foxes. Owing to the ongoing battles, all the hunting rifles had been confiscated by guerrillas of one stripe or another, depriving the villagers of their most effective weapons; the battles also had a debilitating effect on the villagers’ mood, so that during the peak hunting season, the foxes did not have to fear for their lives as they had in years past. Over the long, seemingly endless nights, every female was pregnant, as the foxes cavorted freely in the marshes. Their mournful cries had people constantly on edge.

Using a pole, my third and fourth sisters lugged a big wooden bucket down to the Flood Dragon River, followed by my second sister carrying a sledgehammer. As they passed the home of Aunty Sun, their eyes were drawn to the yard, which was dreary beyond imagining, with no sign of life. A flock of crows lined the wall, a reminder of all that had happened there. The excitement back then was long gone, as were the mutes, to destinations unknown. The girls walked through knee-deep snow to the riverbank, observed by several raccoon dogs in the scrub brush. The sun was in the southeastern sky, its slanting rays glistening on the riverbed. Ice near the bank was white, and walking on it was like stepping on crispy flatcakes, crackling under their feet – ge-ge zha-zha. Out in the center the ice was light blue, hard, smooth, and glossy. My sisters walked gingerly across it, and when my fourth sister slipped and fell, she pulled my second sister, who was holding her hand, down with her. The bucket and hammer crashed loudly on the ice, which made the girls giggle.

Second Sister picked out a clean patch of ice and attacked it with the sledgehammer, which had been in the Shangguan family for generations, raising it high over her head with her thin arms and bringing it down hard; the sharp, hollow sounds of steel on ice flew through the air and made the paper covering of our window quiver. Mother rubbed the top of my head, with its yellow fuzz, and then stroked the fur of my coat. “Little Jintong,” she said, “little Jintong, sister’s making a big hole in the ice. She’ll bring back a bucket of water and pour out half a bucket of fish.” My eighth sister, wrapped in her lynx coat, lay huddled in a corner of the kang, smiling awkwardly, like a furry little Goddess of Mercy. Second Sister’s first hit produced a white dot the size of a walnut; several splinters of ice stuck to the head of the hammer. She raised it again, straining to get it over her head, then brought it down unsteadily. Another white dot appeared on the ice, this one several feet away from the first one. By the time twenty or more white dots covered the patch of ice, Zhaodi was gasping for breath, as long, dense puffs of white mist shot from her mouth. She raised the hammer once more, but in using the last bit of strength to bring it down, she fell headlong onto the ice. Her face was ashen, her thick lips were now bright red; her eyes misted up, and the tip of her nose was dotted with crystalline beads of sweat.

By then my third and fourth sisters were muttering, voicing discontent over their elder sister as gusts of wind from the north swept across the riverbed and sliced into their faces like knives. Second Sister stood up, spit in her hands, picked up the sledgehammer again, and brought it down on the ice. But the next swing sent her sprawling on the ice a second time.

Just as they were gathering up the bucket and carrying pole and were about to head home dejected, resigned to the fact that they would have to continue using melted snow or ice to cook, a dozen or so horses pulling sleighs and leaving trails of icy mist galloped up on the frozen river. Owing to the bright rays of sunlight glancing off the ice and the fact that the horsemen rode in from the southeast, at first Second Sister thought they had coasted down to earth on those very rays of sunlight. They shone like golden sunbeams and were lightning quick. The horses’ hooves flashed like silver as they pummeled the ice, iron horseshoes filling the air with loud cracks and sending shards of ice flying into the faces of my sisters, who stood there gaping, too stupefied to even think about running away. The horses skirted them at a gallop before coming to a staggering halt on the slick ice. My sisters noticed that the sleighs were coated with thick yellow tung oil that shone like stained glass. Four men sat in each sleigh, all wearing hats made of fluffy fox fur. White frost coated their beards, their eyebrows, their eyelashes, and the fronts of their hats. Dense puffs of steamy mist emerged from their mouths and nostrils. Their horses were small and delicate, their legs covered with long hair. From their calm attitude, Second Sister guessed that they were legendary Mongol ponies. A tall, husky fellow jumped down off the second sleigh. He was wearing a sleek lambskin coat, open in front to reveal a leopardskin vest. The vest was girded by a wide leather belt, from which a holstered revolver hung on one side and a hatchet on the other. He alone was wearing a felt hat with flaps instead of a leather cap. Rabbit fur earmuffs covered his exposed ears. “Are you the daughters of the Shangguan family?” he asked.

The man standing before them was Sima Ku, assistant steward of Felicity Manor. “What are you doing out here?” He supplied his own answer before they could reply. “Ah, trying to break a hole in the ice. That’s no job for girls!” He turned and shouted to the men in the sleighs, “Climb down off there, all of you, and help my neighbors chop a hole in the ice. We’ll water these Mongol ponies while we’re at it.”

Dozens of bloated-looking men climbed down off the sleighs, coughing and spitting. Several of them knelt down, took out hatchets, and attacked the ice – pa pa. Splinters flew as cracks opened up. One of the men, whose face sported whiskers, felt the edge of his hatchet and, after blowing his nose, said, “Brother Sima, at this rate, we could work till it was dark and not break through the ice.” Sima Ku knelt down, took out his own hatchet, and attempted a few tentative whacks on the ice. “Damn!” he cursed. “It’s like steel plate.” The whiskered man said, “Elder brother, if we all empty our bladders on one spot, it’ll melt open a hole.” “You dumb prick!” Sima Ku cursed just as exhilaration swept over him. He smacked himself on his rear end – his lips cracked open, for the wound in his backside hadn’t yet completely healed – and said, “I’ve got it. Technician Jiang, come over here.” A bony little man walked up and looked into Sima Ku’s face, not saying a word. But his expression made it clear that he was waiting for orders. “Can that thing you’ve got cut through ice?” Jiang grinned contemptuously and said in a squeaky, ladylike voice, “Like smashing an egg with an iron hammer.”

“Hurry up, then,” Sima Ku said excitedly, “and give me sixty-four – that’s eight times eight – holes in this river of ice. Let my fellow villagers benefit from the presence of Sima Ku.” He turned to my sisters. “You girls stay put.”

Technician Jiang pulled back the canvas tarp covering the third sleigh, revealing two iron objects, painted green, in the shape of enormous artillery shells. With practiced movements, he freed a long plastic tube and wrapped it around the head of one of the objects. Then he looked at the round clock face; two pencil-thin red hands were ticking rhythmically. Finally, he put on a pair of canvas gloves, clicked a metal object that looked like a big opium pipe, attached to two rubber tubes, and gave it a twist. The thing sputtered into life. The technician’s helper, a skinny boy who could not have been more than fifteen, lit a match and touched it to the sputtering ends of the tubes. Blue flames the thickness of silkworm chrysalises shot out with a loud whoosh. He shouted an order to the youngster, who climbed onto the sleigh and twisted the heads of the two objects, quickly turning the blue flames blindingly white, brighter than sunlight. Technician Jiang picked up one of the intimidating objects and looked over at Sima Ku, who squinted as he raised his hand high, then sliced it down. “Start cutting!” he shouted.

Jiang bent over at the waist and aimed the white flame at the frozen surface. Milky white steam jetted a foot or more into the air, accompanied by loud sizzles. His arm controlled the action of his wrist; his wrist controlled the direction of the enormous opium pipe; and the opium pipe spat out white flames that burned a hole in the ice. He looked up. “There’s your hole,” he announced.

Somewhat doubtfully, Sima Ku bent down to look at the ice, and, sure enough, a chunk of ice the size of a millstone, surrounded by little chips, had been burned out of the surface, with river water swirling around it. Jiang then burned a cross in the chunk of ice with the white flame, dividing it into four pieces. When he stepped down on the detached pieces, each was carried away by the river below. Blue water gushed up from the neat hole.

“Neat,” Sima Ku praised the man, who was also the beneficiary of congratulatory looks from the men standing around him. “Now make some more holes for us,” Sima ordered.

Putting all his skills to work, Technician Jiang burned dozens of holes in the two-foot-thick ice covering the Flood Dragon River. They emerged in a variety of shapes: circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, trapezoids, octagons, and pear-blossom, all laid out like a page in a geometry textbook.

“Technician Jiang,” Sima Ku said, “you’ve tasted success! All right, men, back up on the sleds. We need to reach the bridge before dark. But first we’ll water the horses from the Flood Dragon River!”

The men led their horses up to the holes to drink from the river, as Sima Ku turned to Second Sister. “You’re the second daughter, aren’t you? Well, go home and tell your mother that one of these days I’m going to crush that donkey bastard Sha Yueliang and return your elder sister to the mute.”

“Do you know where she is?” my sister asked boldly.

“Sha Yueliang took her with him to sell opium. Him and that donkey-shit band of his.”

Not daring to ask any more, Second Sister watched as Sima Ku climbed up on his sled and headed off toward the west at full speed, followed by the other eleven sleds. They made a turn at the stone bridge over the Flood Dragon River and shot out of sight.

My sisters, still immersed in the miraculous sight they had just witnessed, no longer felt the cold. They stared at all the holes in the ice, from triangles to ovals, from ovals to squares, and from squares to rectangles… as the river water soaked their shoes and quickly turned to ice. The fresh air rising out of the holes filled their lungs. Feelings of reverence for Sima Ku washed over my second, third, and fourth sisters. Now that my eldest sister had served as a glorious model, a thought began to form in Second Sister’s immature brain – she would marry Sima Ku! But someone, it seemed, had warned her coldly that Sima Ku had three wives. All right, then, she thought, I’ll be his fourth! Just then Fourth Sister shouted: “Sister, a big meat stick!”

The so-called meat stick was in fact a silver-skinned eel that had risen to the surface and was writhing clumsily in the water. Its snakelike head was the size of a fist, its eyes cold and menacing, like those of a ferocious snake. As its head broke the surface, bubbles oozing from its mouth popped in the air. “It’s an eel!” Second Sister shouted, picking up her bamboo carrying pole and crashing it down on the head, the hook on the end sending water splashing. The eel’s head fell below the surface, but floated right back up. Its eyes were smashed. Second Sister swung again; this time the eel’s movements slowed and it stretched out stiffly. Throwing down her pole, Second Sister grabbed the head and dragged the eel out of the water. By then it was frozen stiff; it had indeed turned into a meat stick. The girls trudged home, with Third and Fourth Sisters carrying water and Second Sister carrying the hammer in one hand and the eel in the other.

Mother sawed off the eel’s tail and cut the body into eighteen parts, each severed chunk hitting the floor with a thunk. Then she boiled the Flood Dragon River eel in Flood Dragon River water and produced a mouthwatering soup. Beginning that day, Mother’s breasts were youthful again, though scars from the wrinkles mentioned earlier remained on the tips, like the crumpled pages of a book.

That night the delicious soup also lightened Mother’s mood and put a saintly look back on her face, like the merciful expression of the Guanyin Bodhisattva or the Virgin Mary, with my sisters seated around her lotus perch. Her loving children were with her on that peaceful night. Northern winds howled over the Flood Dragon River, turning our chimney into a whistle. Ice-covered branches of the trees in the yard cracked as they swayed in the wind; an icicle broke free of the house eave and shattered crisply on the laundry stone below.

On that same wonderful night, Sima Ku was crossing the metal railroad bridge over the Flood Dragon River, some thirty li from the village, and on the verge of adding a new chapter to the history of Northeast Gaomi Township. That rail line was the Jiaoji Line, built by the Germans. The Wolf and Tiger Brigade warriors had fought a heroic, bloody battle, employing every conceivable tactic to slow down the construction, but in the end they’d been unable to stop the unyielding steel road from slicing through the soft underbelly of Northeast Gaomi Township, dividing it in two. In the words of their forebear Sima the Urn: Goddamn it, that’s the same as slicing open the bellies of our women! The metal dragon had belched thick black smoke as it rolled through Northeast Gaomi, as if rolling right across our chests. Now the rail line was in the hands of the Japanese, who turned it to transport coal and cotton, ultimately for weapons and gunpowder to be turned on us.

Orion’s Belt was drifting west; a crescent moon hung just above the treetops. A punishing west wind swept over the frozen river, evoking creaks and groans from the steel bridge as it swayed. It was a bitterly, almost demonically, cold night, so cold that the ice kept cracking to create cobwebs over the surface of the river. The cracks were louder than gunfire. Sima Ku’s sled brigade reached the foot of the bridge and stopped at the river’s edge. Sima Ku jumped down off his sled, his backside feeling as if it had been clawed by a cat. Dim starlight made the river glimmer slightly, but the sky between the stars and the ice was so black you couldn’t see the fingers of your hand. He clapped his hands, the sound echoing around him from other clapping hands. The mysterious darkness energized and excited him. Later, when asked how he’d felt before destroying the bridge, he’d said, “Great, just like New Year’s.”

His troops groped hand in hand up to the bridge, where Sima Ku climbed onto one of the stanchions, took a pickax from his belt, and hacked away at one of the supports. Sparks flew and loud clangs rang out. “Legs of a whore!” he cursed. ” Nothing but steel.” A shooting star streaked across the sky, trailing a long tail and hissing as it filled the sky with lovely blue sparks, momentarily lighting up the space between heaven and earth. Thanks to the light of the shooting star, he had a good look at the cement stanchion and steel supports. “Technician Jiang,” he shouted, “come up here!” With a boost from his comrades, Jiang climbed onto the stanchion, followed by his young apprentice. Clumps of ice clung to the stanchion like mushrooms, and as Sima Ku reached out to take the boy’s hand, he slipped on the ice and crashed to the ground; the boy managed to stay atop the stanchion. Sima fell right on his backside, from which blood and pus had never stopped seeping out. “Oh, mother -” he screamed. “Dear mother, that hurts like hell!” His men ran up and helped him up off the ice. But that did not stop the screams of pain, screams loud enough to reach the heavens. “Elder brother,” one of them said, “you’re going to have to bear it as best you can. Don’t expose yourself.” That brought an end to the screams. As he stood there shuddering, Sima barked out an order: “Get on with it, Technician Jiang. Just make cuts in a few of them and we’ll leave. The painkilling medication that damned Sha Yueliang gave me is only making it worse.” One of his men said, “Elder brother, I think that’s what he had in mind, and you fell for it.” Sima replied testily, “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the saying that ‘when you’re sick, any doctor will do’?” “Bear it the best you can, elder brother,” the man repeated. “I’ll take care of the problem once we get home. There’s nothing better for burns than badger oil. Works every time.”

Whoosh. An explosion of blue sparks, white around the edges, erupted amid the bridge supports, so bright it brought tears to the men’s eyes. Gaps in the bridge, bridge stanchions, steel supports, dogskin overcoats, foxskin caps, yellow sleds and Mongol ponies, and everything around the bridge came into full view, even a single hair that had fallen onto the ice. The two people on the bridge, Technician Jiang and the young apprentice, were hunkering down on the steel support like a pair of monkeys, their “big opium pipe” spewing white-hot flames as it cut into the metal. White smoke curled upward as the riverbed gave off the strangely fragrant odor of burning metal. Sima Ku watched the sparks and arc lights in rapt fascination, forgetting the pain in his backside. The sparking flames ate through the metal like silkworms consuming mulberry leaves. In hardly any time at all, a piece of the support fell from the bridge and stuck at an angle in the thick ice below. “Cut, cut, cut the fucking thing to pieces!” Sima Ku bellowed.

“It’s nearly time, elder brother,” the man applying the badger oil to Sima Ku’s injured backside said. “The train is due just before dawn.” A dozen or more randomly located steel bridge supports had been cut with the torch, which was still spewing blue and white flames under the bridge. “Those fuckers are getting off easy!” Sima Ku cursed. “Are you sure the bridge will collapse under the weight of the train?” “If I cut any more, I’m afraid the bridge might collapse of its own weight before the train even reaches it.” “All right, you can come down now. As for you men,” he said to the others, “help those two hardy fellows down and reward them each with a bottle of our liquor.” The blue sparks died out. The brigade members helped Technician Jiang and his apprentice down off the stanchion and onto one of the sleds. In the darkness just before dawn, the winds died out, turning the air bone-chilling cold. The Mongol ponies pulled the sleds tentatively through the darkness across the ice. Before they’d gone a mile, Sima Ku called them to a halt. “After a hard night’s work,” he said, “it’s time to sit back and watch the show.”

The sun had barely turned the edge of the sky red when the cargo train steamed up. The river glistened, the trees on both banks were glazed with gold and silver, the steel bridge sprawled silently across the river. Sima Ku rubbed his hands nervously as curses dripped from his mouth. The train clanged menacingly as it pressed down on them; when it neared the bridge, a loud whistle resounded between heaven and earth. Black smoke spewed from the engine, white mist flew from its wheels, the grinding of steel on steel made the men shudder in fear as the icy surface of the river trembled. The brigade members watched the train fitfully, the horses’ ears pressed back against the mane on their necks. The loutish, vulgar train rushed up onto the bridge, which seemed to stand there loftish and unyielding. In a matter of seconds, the faces of Sima Ku and his men turned ashen, but seconds later, they were jumping up and down on the ice, whooping it up. Sima Ku’s joyous shouts were the loudest of all, his jumps the highest, even given the seriousness of the injuries to his backside. The bridge collapsed in a matter of seconds, sending the engine and the load of railroad ties, steel rails, sand, and mud straight down. The engine hit one of the pilings, which also collapsed. The sound was deafening as chunks of ice bathed in the morning light, along with huge rocks, twisted metal, and shattered ties, flew high into the sky. Dozens of loaded rail cars accordioned up behind the engine with a roar; some fell into the river below, others sprawled across the tracks at rakish angles. Explosions began to erupt, starting from a car carrying high explosives and followed by detonated ammunition. The icy surface of the river split open, sending the water beneath gushing upward. Mixed with the water were fish, shrimp, even some green-shelled turtles. A booted human leg landed on the head of one of the Mongol ponies, nearly knocking it senseless and causing its front legs to crumple. A wheel from the train, which weighed hundreds of pounds, crashed into the ice, raising a geyser of water that fell muddily back to the surface. Powerful waves of sound turned Sima Ku deaf as he watched the Mongol ponies run crazily across the ice, dragging their sleds behind them. The brigade troops stood or sat in a daze, dark blood seeping out of some of their ears. He was shouting at the top of his lungs, but he couldn’t hear himself; his men’s mouths were open, as if they too were shouting, but he couldn’t hear them either…

Somehow Sima Ku managed to lead his troops back to the spot on the river where they had cut holes in the ice with their blue and white flames the morning before. My second, third, and fourth sisters had come out to fetch more water and catch some fish, but the holes had frozen over during the night, as thick as a hand. Second Sister had hacked them open again with her hammer. When Sima Ku and his men reached the spot, their horses rushed up to drink from the river. In a manner of minutes, after they’d drunk their fill, they began to shudder, their legs started to twitch, and they crumpled to the ice, every one of them suddenly dead. The freezing water had ripped their expanded lungs apart.

On that early morning, every living creature in Northeast Gaomi Township – humans, horses, donkeys, cows, chickens, dogs, geese, ducks – felt the power of the explosions off to the southwest. Hibernating snakes, thinking it was thunder announcing the Insect Waking season, slithered out of their caves and immediately froze to death.

Sima Ku led his troops into the village to rest and reorganize, and was greeted by a string of the vilest curses from Sima Ting. But since everyone’s hearing had been so badly affected by the explosion, they all thought he was singing their praises – Sima Ting always had a smug, complacent look on his face when he cursed. Sima Ku’s three wives had pooled every folk remedy and type of medication they had to treat the burned and frostbitten backside of the man they shared. The first wife would apply a plaster, which the second wife would remove to wash the area with a lotion prepared with a dozen rare medicinal herbs, after which the third wife would cover it with a powder composed of crushed pine and cypress leaves, ilex root, egg whites, and seared mouse whiskers. Back and forth it went, the skin on his backside wet one minute and dry the next, until the old injuries were now joined by new ones. It reached the point where Sima Ku wrapped himself in a lined jacket with two leather belts, and the moment he saw his three wives coming his way, he raised his hatchet or cocked his rifle. But while his backside injuries remained, his hearing returned.

The first thing he heard were the angry curses of his brother: “You fucking idiot, you’ll kill every last soul in this village, you wait and see!” Reaching out with a hand that was as soft and as ruddy as his brother’s, with fleshy fingers and thin skin, he grabbed his brother by the chin. Seeing the scraggly, yellow, ratlike whiskers above his chapped upper lip, which was normally shaved clean, he shook his head sadly and said, “You and I are from the same father’s seed, so cursing me is the same as cursing yourself. Go ahead, curse, curse all you like!” He dropped his hand.

Sima Ting stood there, mouth agape, and stared at his brother’s broad back. All he could do was shake his head. Picking up his gong, he walked outside, climbed clumsily up the steps of his watchtower, and gazed off to the northwest.

Some time later, Sima Ku led his men back to the bridge, where they scavenged sections of twisted track, a train wheel, painted bright red, and a bunch of nondescript chunks of brass and iron, all of which they put on display outside the gate of the church as proof of their glorious military victory. With saliva bubbling at the corners of his mouth, Sima boasted to the gathered crowd, over and over, how he had destroyed the bridge and derailed the Japanese cargo train. As he recounted the event, he spiced it up with new details, his tale growing richer and more interesting with each telling, until it had all the excitement and adventure of a popular romance. My second sister, Zhaodi, was his most ardent listener. At first just a member of the crowd, before long she bore witness to the new weapon that had been used; eventually, in her mind, she became a participant in the destruction of the bridge, as if she’d been one of Sima Ku’s followers from the very beginning, climbing onto the piling with him and falling to the icy surface of the river right beside him. She grimaced each time the pain in his backside erupted, as if they shared the same wounds.

Mother had always said that the Sima men were all lunatics. By this time she had figured out what Zhaodi was thinking, and had a premonition that the drama involving Laidi was about to be replayed, and soon. With growing anxiety, she looked into her daughter’s dark eyes and saw the frightful passion burning inside. How could those eyes and those thick, bright red, shameless lips belong to a seventeen-year-old girl? She was like a bovine creature in heat. “Zhaodi, my daughter,” Mother said, “do you realize how old you are?” Second Sister glared at Mother. “Weren’t you already married to my father when you were my age? And you said your aunt had twins when she was only sixteen, both plump as little piglets!” All Mother could do at this point was sigh. But Second Sister was not through. “I know you want to say he already has three wives. So I’ll be his fourth. And I know you want to say that he’s a generation older than me. Well, we don’t have the same surname and we’re not related, so I’m not breaking any rules.”

Mother relinquished her authority over Second Sister, letting her do as she pleased. She seemed calm enough, but I could tell that it was tearing her up inside by the changed taste of her milk. During those days, when Second Sister was chasing after Sima Ku, Mother took my other six sisters down to the cellar to dig a secret path among the turnips to the stockpile of sorghum stalks out by the southern wall. Part of the dirt we dug up we dumped in the latrine and part we carried out to the donkey pen, but most of it went down the well next to the stockpile.

New Year’s passed peacefully. On the night of the Lantern Festival, Mother strapped me on her back and led my six sisters outside to enjoy the lanterns. Every family in the village hung lanterns outside their doors; they were small lanterns, except for the two red lanterns the size of water vats hung by the gate of Felicity Manor, each lit by a goat tallow candle thicker than my arm. The light they gave off flickered brightly. Where was Zhaodi? Mother didn’t even ask. She had become our family’s guerrilla fighter, one who might stay away for three days, then show up unannounced. We were about to set off firecrackers on the last night of the year to welcome the god of wealth when Zhaodi showed up wearing a black rain cloak. She proudly showed off the leather belt wrapped tightly around her narrow waist and the silver revolver hanging heavily from it. In a sort of mocking tone, Mother said, “Who’d have guessed that the Shangguan family would one day produce another highwayman?” She seemed on the verge of crying, but Second Sister merely laughed, the laugh of a lovestruck girl, which brought a ray of hope to Mother that it was not too late to bring her to her senses. “Zhaodi,” she said, “I can’t let you become another of Sima Ku’s concubines.” But Zhaodi just sneered – this time it was the sneer of a wicked woman – and the hope that had flared briefly in Mother’s heart was extinguished.

On the first day of the year, Mother went with New Year’s greetings to her aunt. She told her what had happened to Laidi and Zhaodi. This elderly aunt of hers, a woman of vast experience, said, “Where the romantic affairs of sons and daughters are concerned, you must let them take their course. Besides, with sons-in-law like Sha Yueliang and Sima Ku, your worries are over. Both those men are high-flying hawks.” “What worries me is that they won’t die in bed,” Mother said. Her aunt replied, “It’s usually worthless people who die in bed.” Mother tried to keep arguing her case, but her aunt waved her off impatiently, sweeping away Mother’s complaints like shooing a fly. “Let me have a look at your son,” she said. Mother lifted me out of the cloth pouch and laid me on the bed. I was frightened by the tiny, deeply wrinkled face of Mother’s aunt, especially her radiant green eyes, set deep in their sockets. Her sharply jutting brow was completely hairless, while the spots around her eyes were covered by fine yellow hairs. She mussed my hair with a bony hand, then tweaked my ear, pinched my nose, and even reached down between my legs to feel my little pecker. Disgusted by her humiliating groping, I strained to crawl over to the corner of the bed. But she grabbed me and yelled, “Stand up, you little bastard!” Mother said, “Aunty, how can you expect him to stand up? He’s only seven months old.” “When I was seven months old I was already going out to the chicken coop to fetch eggs for your grandma,” the old woman said. “That was you, Aunty. You’re a special person.” The old woman said, “I think this little devil is special too! Too bad about that fellow Malory.” Mother’s face reddened, then paled. I crawled to the back of the bed, grabbed hold of the window ledge, and pulled myself up onto my feet. “See there?” the old woman clapped her hands and said. “I told you he could stand, and he did! Look at me, you little bastard!” “His name is Jintong, Aunty, so why do you keep calling him little bastard?”

“Whether he’s a bastard or not only his mother knows. Well, is he, my dear niece? Besides, to me that’s a pet name – little bastard. So are little turtle spawn, little bunny rabbit, little beast. Walk over here, little bastard!” I turned around on shaky legs and looked at Mother’s teary eyes. “Jintong, my good little boy!” Mother said as she reached out for me. I threw myself into her waiting arms. I was actually walking. “My son can walk,” Mother muttered as she hugged me tightly. “My son can walk.” “Sons and daughters are like birds,” her aunt said. “When it’s time for them to fly, you can’t hold them back. And what about you? What I mean is, what would you do if they all died?”

“I’d be fine,” Mother replied.

“That’s what I want to hear,” the old woman said. “Always let your thoughts rise up to heaven, or go down into the ocean, and if all else fails, let them climb a mountain, but never make things hard on yourself. Do you understand what I’m saying?” “I understand,” Mother said. When they were saying good-bye, the old woman asked, “Is your mother-in-law still alive?” “Yes,” Mother said. “She’s rolling around in donkey shit.” The old woman said, “That old witch was a tower of strength her whole life. I never thought she’d one day fall so low!”

If not for that private conversation on the first day of the new year, I’d never have been able to walk at seven months, and Mother wouldn’t have been interested in taking us outside to look at the lanterns, which would have meant a very boring Lantern Festival for us; the history of our family might well have been very different. The streets were teeming with people, but none of them looked familiar. An air of stability and unity existed among residents. Children waved sparklers – what we called golden mouse droppings – that sizzled and popped as the children threaded their way through the crowds. We stopped in front of Felicity Manor to gaze at the gigantic red lanterns on either side of the gate, their ambiguous yellow light illuminating the gilded words “Felicity Manor” carved into a hanging signboard. Bursts of noise emerged from the brightly lit courtyard within. A crowd had gathered outside the gate, where they stood silently, their hands tucked up their sleeves, as if waiting for something. My big-mouthed third sister, Lingdi, asked the person next to her, “Are they going to hand out some porridge, uncle?” The man merely shook his head, but someone behind her said, “They don’t do that till the eighth day of the twelfth month, young lady.” “Then why are you all standing around here?” she turned and asked. “Because they’re going to put on a modern play,” he said. “We’re told that a famous actor from Jinan has come to town.” Mother pinched her before she could say any more.

Finally, four men emerged from the Sima compound, each carrying a black metal object on a tall bamboo pole. Flames licked out of whatever they were, turning the area around the gate from night to day – no, even brighter than daylight. Pigeons roosting in the dilapidated bell tower of the church not far from the compound were startled into flight; they cooed noisily as they flew past us into the dark night. Someone in the crowd shouted, “Gas lamps!” From that moment on, we knew that in this world, in addition to bean-oil lanterns, kerosene lamps, and firefly lanterns, there was such a thing as gas lamps, and that they were blindingly bright. The husky lamp bearers formed a square in front of the Felicity Manor gate, like four black pillars. Some more men walked noisily through the gate carrying a rolled-up straw mat. When they reached the space created by the four men with their gas lamps, they tossed down the mat, undid the ropes around it, and let it spread out on its own. They then bent down, picked up corners of the unrolled mat, and began churning their dark, hairy legs. Because their movements were so quick, and because they were in the light of gas lamps, our eyes were filled with dark blurs that made it seem as if they all had at least four legs, connected seemingly by translucent cobwebs. And that image created the appearance of beetles caught in a spider’s web, struggling to break free. Once the mat was laid out the way they wanted it, they stood up, faced the crowd, and struck a pose. They all had painted faces, like shiny masks made of animal skins: a panther, a spotted deer, a lynx, and one of those raccoons that feeds on temple offerings. They then went back inside, executing a two-steps-forward, one-step-backward dance.

Amid the sizzle of four gas lamps, we waited silently; just like the new straw mat. The four men holding the lamp poles were transformed into black stones. But then the crisp sound of a gong energized us, and we turned to gaze at the gateway, though our view inside was blocked by a whitewashed wall on which the gilded word “fortune” was carved. We continued to wait, an eternity, it seemed, until the master of Felicity Manor, the onetime head of Dalan, and the current head of the Peace Preservation Corps, Sima Ting, appeared, looking downcast. He was holding a badly beaten brass gong, which he struck reluctantly as he made a circle of the area. He stopped in the center of the straw mat and announced, “Fellow township residents – grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, boys and girls – my brother has achieved a glorious victory in bringing down the steel bridge. This news has traveled far and wide, and we have been visited by friends and relatives who have presented us with more than twenty congratulatory scrolls. To celebrate this glorious victory, my brother has invited a troop of actors to perform today. He himself will mount the stage in full costume in a new drama intended to educate all township residents. While celebrating the Lantern Festival, we must not forget our heroic war of resistance and cannot allow the Japs to occupy our town. I, Sima Ting, am a son of China, and will no longer serve as head of the puppet Peace Preservation Corps. Fellow residents, as Chinese, we cannot serve those Japanese sons of bitches.” When he finished his rhythmic harrangue, he bowed to the crowd, turned, and ran back to join the musicians – a fiddler, a flutist, and a balloon guitarist – who were just then walking out with their stools.

The musicians sat near the straw mat and began tuning their instruments, led by the flutist. High notes fell, low notes coiled skyward. The coordinated sounds of the fiddle, the flute, and the balloon guitar formed a single thread with three parts, stopping once they were all in tune. Then they waited. Now out came the percussionists: drummers, gong player, and cymbalist, instruments under one arm and stools under the other; they sat across from the other musicians. A fierce drumbeat banged out the rhythm, followed by the crisp clangs of a gong and the high-pitched beats of a small drum; they were joined by a rope of notes from the fiddle, balloon guitar, and flute that tied up our legs so we couldn’t move and tied up our souls so we couldn’t think. The melody was soft and lingering, sad and dreary, sometimes moaning, sometimes murmuring. What kind of drama was this? Our Northeast Gaomi “cat’s meow” form of singing was called by some “tying up your old lady’s peg.” When the cat’s meow was sung, the three cardinal values of social relations were turned inside out; when you heard the cat’s meow, you forgot even your own mother and father. Then, as the beat picked up, the audience began to tap their feet; our lips began to twitch, our hearts quivered. The waiting was like an arrow on the bow before firing: five, four, three, two, one – the voice reached its highest point, then trailed off, rising hoarsely, higher and higher, until it tore through the heavens.

I was once a girl, gentle and graceful, charming and coy – na! With the sound of the voice lingering in the air, my second sister, Zhaodi, floated out from the Sima compound on tiny steps, as if walking on water, a red cotton flower in her hair and wearing a blue, wide-sleeved jacket over sweeping pants that all but obscurred her embroidered slippers; she carried a basket over her left arm and a wooden club in her right hand. She floated up into the light of the gas lamps and stopped in the center of the straw mat, where she struck a dramatic pose. Her eyebrows were no longer eyebrows; they were crescent moons at the edge of the sky. Her gaze washed up onto our heads; her nose was thin and angular, her thick lips were painted a red more lush than cherry blossoms in May. Absolute silence surrounded her; ten thousand unblinking eyes, ten thousand pounding hearts; pent-up power burst out in a loud roar of approval. My second sister then spread her legs, bent at the waist, and ran, making a complete circle. Her limbs were supple as willow branches, her steps like a snake moving on tassels. There was no wind that night, but it was bitter cold, and yet my sister wore only thin clothing. Mother watched in amazement; my sister’s figure had developed rapidly after eating the eel; her breasts were the size of pears, beautifully shaped, and she was surely destined to carry on the glorious tradition of Shangguan women, with big breasts and wide hips. She wasn’t even breathing hard after making a circle around the yard, her demeanor unchanged. She sang the second line: I shall marry the man of courage, Sima Ku. This line was smooth and even, no rise at the end, but it had a powerful effect on the audience. People whispered to one another, Whose daughter is this? She’s a daughter in the Shangguan family. Didn’t the Shangguan daughter run off with the leader of the musket band? She’s their second daughter. When did she become Sima Ku’s concubine? You dumb fuck, this is opera! Shut the fuck up, both of you! My third sister, Lingdi, and her other sisters shouted from the crowd to protect Second Sister’s reputation. Quiet returned. My husband, an expert at destroying bridges, threw Molotov cocktails at the Flood Dragon River Bridge. In the fifth month, during the Dragon Boat Festival, blue flames shot high into the air, incinerating the Jap devils, who screamed for their mothers and fathers. My husband was badly wounded in the backside. Last night, when a storm blanketed heaven and earth with snow, my husband led his troops to destroy the steel bridge… My sister then went through the motions of breaking a hole in the ice with an ax, then pretended she was washing clothes in the water. She was quaking from head to toe, like a dead leaf on the tip of a branch in the heart of winter. People were captivated by the performance; some roared their approval, others dried their eyes with their sleeves. As a burst of drums and cymbals tore through the air, Second Sister stood up and gazed into the distance. I hear an explosion off in the southwest, and I see flames leap into the sky. It must be my husband, who has destroyed the bridge, and the Jap devils’ train has gone to meet its maker. I must run home to warm a pot of wine and kill a pair of hens for chicken stew… Then my sister gathered her clothes around her and made as if to climb an embankment as her song continued: I look up and see that I am face-to-face with four ravenous wolves… The four fleet-footed men in painted faces who had laid out the mats came somersaulting through the gate. They surrounded my sister and reached out to claw her, like cats closing in on a mouse. The man whose face was painted like a raccoon sang out in a strangled voice: I am the Japanese platoon leader Tatsuda, on the lookout for a pretty young girl. I’ve heard there are some real beauties in Northeast Gaomi. I look up and see a lovely face right in front of me. Hey, there, young lady, come with me, an Imperial soldier, for a good life. The men pounced on my sister, who turned as stiff as a board. Holding her high over their heads, the four “Jap devils” took a turn around the mats. The drums and cymbals beat a frenzied rhythm, like an approaching storm. The audience crowded anxiously up to the stage. “Put my daughter down!” Mother screamed as she rushed up to the stage. I stood up straight in my carrying pouch; the feeling that action brought would return later in life as I rode on horseback. Mother reached out and, like an eagle swooping down on a rabbit, dug into the eyes of “Platoon Leader Tatsuda.” With a cry of alarm, he released my sister, and so did the other three men, letting her drop hard onto the mat. The three actors scampered off the stage, leaving “Platoon Leader Tatsuda” in the grip of Mother, who wrapped her legs around his waist and tore at his face and head with her fingernails. Second Sister got up and wrapped her arms around Mother. “Mother, Mother!” she shouted. “We’re just acting, it isn’t real!”

Members of the audience ran up and pulled Mother off “Platoon Leader Tatsuda.” His face a mass of bloody scratches, he turned and ran in through the gate as if his life depended on it. Gasping for breath, her anger not yet spent, Mother said, “Who dares try to take advantage of my daughter, which one of you dares to do that?” “Mother,” Second Sister spat out angrily, “you have ruined a perfectly good play!” “Listen to me, Zhaodi,” Mother said, “let’s go home. We can’t take part in plays like that.” She reached out to take Second Sister’s arm, but Zhaodi shook her off. “Mother,” she hissed, “don’t make me lose face in front of all these people!” “You’re making me lose face,” Mother replied. “Come home with me right now!” “I’m not going to,” Second Sister said, just as Sima Ku came onstage singing loudly: Vm riding my horse home after blowing up a bridge… He was wearing riding boots and an army cap, and carrying a leather crop. Seated upon an imaginary horse, he stomped on the ground and moved forward, rising and falling in concert with the imaginary reins he was holding, as if galloping on horseback. The pounding of drums and crash of cymbals shook the heavens, string and bamboo instruments rose in harmony; above it all, the strains of a flute tore through the clouds and firmament, driving the soul out of the body of anyone within earshot, not from fear, inspired but not afraid. Sima Ku’s face was as cold and hard as cast iron, somber as death, not a trace of shallow slyness: Suddenly I hear turmoil on the riverbank, and I whip my horse to make it go faster- A two-string huqin made the sound of a horse’s whinnies: Hui-er hui-er hui-er hui… my heart’s on fire, my horse runs like the wind, normal steps made in one, three steps made in two… Faster and faster the drums and cymbals, stomp-stomp, moving ever forward, a hawk’s turn, a split in the air; an old ox gasps for air, the lion dances atop the embroidered ball – Sima Ku performed every acrobatic trick he knew on the straw mat; hard to believe that a heavy medicinal plaster was still stuck to his backside. Second Sister anxiously pushed Mother, who was still grumbling, back into the audience, where she belonged. Three men acting as Japanese soldiers rushed into the center of the stage, bent over at the waist, planning to lift Second Sister over their heads again. “Platoon Leader Tatsuda” was nowhere to be found, so it was up to the other three; two of them lifted her head and shoulders, the third held her feet, his painted face sticking up between her legs. It was such a funny sight that the audience couldn’t help but giggle, and that turned to laughter when he made a funny face. So then he started hamming it up, and the audience exploded with boisterous guffaws, which drew a scowl from Sima Ku. But he sang on anyway: Suddenly I hear shouts and screams. Its the Japanese soldiers in another murderous rage, and I race forward with no thought for myself- I reach out and grab the shoulders of the Japanese dog. Let go of her! Sima Ku reached out and grabbed the head of the “Japanese soldier” sticking up between Second Sister’s legs and shouts. That’s when the fight commenced. The odds were now three to one, rather than four to one. The end came swiftly for the “Japanese,” and Sima had rescued his “wife.” Holding my sister in his arms, with the “Japanese” on their hands and knees on the mat, Sima Ku strode through the gate amid the strains of joyous music. The four men holding the kerosene lanterns abruptly came to life, following Sima through the gate, taking the light with them and leaving us staring into the darkness…

The next morning, the real Japanese surrounded the village. The crack of rifle fire, the thud of artillery, and the loud whinnies of war ponies startled us out of our sleep. With me in her arms, Mother led my seven sisters down into the turnip cellar, crawling through the dark, dank tunnel until we emerged into a wider space, where Mother lit an oil lantern. In the dim light, we sat on a straw mat, cocking our ears and listening to the scattered noises upstairs.

I don’t know how long we sat there before we heard heavy breathing in the dark tunnel. Mother picked up a pair of blacksmith tongs, quickly blew out the lantern, returning the room to darkness. I began to cry. Mother stuffed one of her nipples into my mouth. It was cold, hard, and rigid, and it had a salty, bitter taste.

The heavy breathing drew nearer; Mother raised the tongs over her head with both hands at the very moment I heard my second sister, Zhaodi, call out in a strange voice, “Mother, it’s me, don’t hit me…” With a sigh of relief, Mother let her hands drop weakly in front of her. “Zhaodi,” she said, “you scared me half to death.” “Light the lantern, Mother,” Zhaodi said. “There’s somebody behind me.”

Somehow Mother got the lantern lit; its pale light shone throughout the cave once again. Second Sister was covered with mud and had a scratch on her cheek. She carried a bundle in her arms. “What is that?” Mother asked, registering her surprise. Second Sister scrunched up her mouth, as translucent tears made tracks through the dirt on her face. “Mother,” she said, her voice cracking, “this is his third wife’s son.” Mother froze. Then: “Take that back to wherever you found it!” she said angrily. Second Sister came up to Mother on her knees, looked up, and said, “Can’t you show some mercy, Mother? His family has just been wiped out. This one is all that’s left to carry on the Sima family line…”

Mother pulled back a corner of the bundle, revealing the dark, thin, long face of the last surviving son of the Sima family. The little tyke was fast asleep, breathing evenly; his mouth puckered up, as if suckling in his dream. My heart filled with hatred for him. I spat out the nipple and howled. Mother shoved the nipple, colder and even more bitter-tasting than before, back into my mouth.

“Tell me you’ll take him, Mother, won’t you?” Second Sister asked.

Mother squeezed her eyes shut and said nothing.

Second Sister stood up, thrust the bundled baby into the arms of Third Sister, Lingdi, fell back onto her knees, and banged her head on the ground in a kowtow. “Mother,” she said through her tears, “I’m his woman while I’m alive, and I’ll be his ghost after I die. Please save this child, and I’ll never forget your kindness as long as I live!”

Second Sister stood up and turned to go back out through the tunnel. Mother reached out and stopped her. “Where are you going?” she sobbed.

Second Sister said, “Mother, he has been wounded in the leg and is hiding under the millstone. I must go to him.”

The stillness outside was shattered by the clatter of horse hooves and the crackle of gunfire. Mother moved over to block the entrance to the turnip cellar. “I’ll do what you say, but I won’t let you risk your life out there.”

“His leg won’t stop bleeding, Mother,” Second Sister said. “If I don’t go to him, he’ll bleed to death. And if he dies, what’s the use of my going on living? Let me go, Mother, please…”

Mother let out a howl, but quickly closed her mouth again. “Mother,” Second Sister said, “I’ll get down and kowtow to you again.”

She fell to her knees and banged her head on the ground, then buried her face in Mother’s legs. But then she parted Mother’s legs and quickly crawled out of the room.

5

The nineteen heads of the Sima family hung from a rack outside the Felicity Manor gate all the way up to Qingming, the day of ancestral worship in the warmth of spring, when flowers were in full bloom. The rack, made of five thick and very straight China fir boards, looked something like a swing set. The heads were strung up with steel wire. Even though crows and sparrows and owls had pecked away most of the flesh, it still took little imagination to distinguish the heads of Sima Ting’s wife; his two foolish sons; the first, second, and third wives of Sima Ku; the nine sons and daughters born to those three women; and the father, mother, and two younger brothers of Sima Ku’s third wife, who were visiting at the time. The air hung heavy over the village following the massacre, the survivors taking on the appearance of living ghosts, cooping themselves up in dark rooms during the daytime, daring to emerge only after night had fallen.

There was no news at all of Second Sister after she left us that day. The baby boy she left behind caused us no end of trouble. Mother had to nurse him to keep him from starving to death during those days we spent in our cellar hideaway. With his mouth and eyes opened wide, he greedily sucked up milk that should have been mine. He had an astonishing capacity, sucking breasts dry and then bawling for more. He sounded like a crow when he cried, or a toad, or maybe an owl. And the look on his face was that of a wolf, or a dog, or maybe a wild hare. He was my sworn enemy; the world wasn’t big enough for the two of us. I howled in protest when he took Mother’s breasts as his own; he cried just as loud when I tried to take back what was mine. His eyes remained open when he cried. They were the eyes of a lizard. Damn Zhaodi for bringing home a demon born to a lizard!

Mother’s face turned puffy and pale under this double onslaught, and I sensed dimly that little yellow buds had begun to sprout all over her body, like the turnips that had been in our cellar over the long winter. The first of them appeared on her breasts, and that resulted in a diminished supply of milk, with a sweet, turnipy taste. How about you, little Sima bastard, has that scary taste eluded you? People are supposed to treasure what’s theirs, but that was getting harder and harder to do. If I didn’t suckle, he would for sure. Precious gourds, little doves, enamel vases, your skin has withered, you’ve dried up, your blood vessels have turned purple, your nipples are nearly black; you sag impotently.

In order for both me and that little bastard to survive, Mother courageously led my sisters out of the cellar into the light of day. The grain in our family storage room was all gone, as were the mule and the donkey; the pots and pans and all the dishes had been smashed; and the Guanyin Bodhisattva in the shrine was now a headless corpse. Mother had forgotten to take her foxskin coat into the cellar with her; the lynx coats belonging to my eighth sister and me were nowhere to be seen. The fur on the other coats, which the rest of my sisters never took off, had by then fallen off, giving them the look of mangy wild animals. Shangguan Lü lay beneath the millstone in the storage room. She’d eaten all twenty or so of the turnips Mother had left for her before moving into the cellar, and had shat a pile of cobblestone-looking turds. When Mother went in to see her, she picked up a handful of the petrified turds and flung them at her. The skin of her face looked like frozen, decaying turnip peels; her white hair looked like twisted yarn, some sticking straight up, some hanging down her back. A green light emerged from her eyes. Shaking her head, Mother laid several turnips on the floor in front of her. All the Japanese – or maybe it was Chinese – had left for us was a half cellar of sugar beets that had already begun to sprout. Overcome by disappointment, Mother found an unbroken earthenware jar in which Shangguan Lü had hidden her precious arsenic. She poured the red powder into the turnip soup. Once the powder dissolved, a colored oil spread across the surface of the soup and a foul smell filled the air. Mother stirred the mixture with a wooden ladle until it was smooth, then picked it up and slowly poured it into the wok. The corner of her mouth twitched oddly. After ladling some of the turnip soup into a chipped bowl, Mother said, “Lingdi, give this soup to your grandmother.” “Mother,” Lingdi said, “you put poison in it, didn’t you?” Mother nodded. “Are you going to poison Grandma?” “We’ll all die together,” Mother said, to which my sisters responded by weeping, including my blind eighth sister, whose thin cries were little more than the buzzing of a hornet. Her large, black, but sightless eyes filled with tears. Eighth Sister was the most wretched of the wretched, the saddest of the sad. “But we don’t want to die, Mother,” my sisters pleaded tearfully. Even I took up the chant: “Mother… Mother “My poor, dear little children…” Mother said; by then she too was crying. She cried for the longest time, all the while accompanied by her sobbing children. Finally, she blew her nose loudly, took back the chipped bowl, and flung it and its contents into the yard. “We’re not going to die! If death doesn’t frighten a person, then nothing can!” With that comment, she stood up and led us out into the street to find food. We were the first villagers to venture out onto the street. When they spotted the heads of the Sima family, my sisters were afraid. But in a matter of days, it was just another village sight. Mother held the little Sima bastard in her arm, so he was directly opposite me. She pointed to the heads and said to him softly, “I don’t want you to ever forget that, you poor child.”

Mother and my sisters walked out of the village and into a reawakened field, where they began digging up white grass roots, which they would boil after rinsing and mashing them. Third Sister, the smart one, found a nest of voles. What made that such a great find was not just the addition of meat to our diet, but that the food they’d stored away was now ours as well. After that, my sisters made a fishnet out of some hemp twine, which they used to snag some dark, thin fish and shrimp that had survived the winter in the local pond. One day, Mother put a spoonful of fish broth into my mouth; I spit it right back out and started bawling at the top of my lungs. Then she put a spoonful into the mouth of the Sima brat; the moron swallowed it right down. So Mother fed him another spoonful. He swallowed that too. “Good,” Mother exclaimed excitedly. “For all the bad karma, at least this kid knows how to eat.” She turned her gaze to me. “Now, what about you? It’s time you got weaned too.” Panic-stricken, I grabbed hold of her breast.

The village began to come back to life, once we had taken the lead. It was a calamitous time for local voles; after them came wild jackrabbits, fish, turtles, shrimp, crabs, snakes, and frogs. All across the vast land, the only creatures that survived were poisonous toads and birds on the wing. And still, if not for the timely growth of edible wild herbs, most of the villagers would have starved to death anyway. After Qingming passed, the peach blossoms began to fall, and steam rose from fallow fields that cried out for a new planting. But we had no farm animals and no seeds. By the time fat little tadpoles were swimming in the marshes, and in the oval waters of the local pond, and in the shallows of the river, the villagers had taken to the road. By the fourth month, most had left; by the fifth month, most had returned to their homes. Third Master Fan said, “Here at least there are wild grasses and edible herbs to keep us from starving. That’s more than you can say about other places.” By the sixth month, outsiders had begun showing up in our village. They slept in the church, and on the ground in the Sima compound, and in abandoned mills. Like dogs driven mad by hunger, they stole food out from under us. Finally, Third Master Fan organized the village men to drive the outsiders away. He was our leader; the outsiders countered with a leader of their own – a young man with bushy eyebrows and big eyes. He was a master at catching birds, always seen with a pair of slingshots hanging from his belt and, over his shoulder, a burlap bag that was filled with pellets of dried mud. Third Sister saw him in action one day. A pair of partridges was in the midst of a mating ritual up in the air. He took out one of his slingshots and fired a mud pellet into the sky, seemingly without even aiming. One of the partridges fell to the ground like a stone, landing right at Third Sister’s feet. The bird’s head was smashed. Its mate cried out as it circled overhead. The man took out another pellet, fired it into the air, and the second bird fell to the ground. He bent down, picked up the bird, and walked up to my sister. He looked right at her; she returned his gaze with a hateful stare of her own. By that time, Third Master Fan had been to our house to inform us of the movement to drive away the outsiders, which fired up our hatred of them. But rather than pick up the bird at Third Sister’s feet, he tossed her the one in his hands, then turned and walked off without a word.

Third Sister came home with the partridges; the meat was for Mother, the broth for my sisters and the little Sima bastard, and the bones for my grandmother, who crunched them up loudly. Third Sister didn’t tell anyone that the outsider had given her the partridges, which were quickly transformed into tasty juices that wound up in my stomach. On a number of occasions, Mother waited until I was asleep to stick one of her nipples into the mouth of the little Sima baby; but he refused it. He preferred to grow up on grasses and bark. Blessed with an astonishing appetite, he swallowed anything that was put into his mouth. “He’s like a donkey,” Mother commented. “He was born to eat grass.” Even the turds that came out of him were like equine droppings. Not only that, Mother believed that he had a pair of ruminating stomachs. We often saw clumps of grass rise up from his stomach into his mouth, then watched as he closed his eyes and chewed contentedly, white foamy bubbles gathering at the corners of his mouth. After he’d chewed for a while, he’d stretch out his neck and swallow it down with a gurgling sound.

Battles between the villagers and outsiders broke out following an attempt by Third Master Fan to ask them politely to leave. The outsiders’ representative – the young man who had given Third Sister the partridges – was called Birdman Han, the bird-catching specialist. With his hands on the slingshots at his waist, he argued vigorously, without giving an inch. He said that Northeast Gaomi had at one time been an unpopulated wasteland, and everyone was an outsider then. So if you can live here, why can’t we? But those were fighting words, and an argument ensued; that soon led to pushing and shoving. One young villager, an impetuous fellow everyone called Consumptive Six, came bursting out from behind Third Master Fan, picked up a steel club, and swung it at the head of Birdman Han’s aging mother. Her skull cracked and, leaking a gray liquid, the old woman died on the spot. Birdman let out a wail that sounded more like that of an injured wolf. Taking his slingshots from his belt, he let two pellets fly, blinding Comsumptive Six where he stood. All hell broke loose then, with the outsiders gradually getting the worst of it. With the body of his mother over his shoulder, Birdman Han retreated, fighting every step of the way,- all the way back to the sandy ridge west of the village. There he laid his mother out on the ground, loaded his slingshot, and took aim at Third Master Fan. “You had better not try to kill us all, headman. Even a rabbit bites when it’s cornered!” Before he’d finished, one of his pellets cut the air with a whoosh and struck Third Master Fan in his left ear. “Since we are all Chinese,” Birdman Han said, “I’ll spare you this time.” Cupping his hand over his split ear, Third Master Fan backed off without a word.

The outsiders threw up dozens of tents on the sandy ridge, making it their own. Birdman Han buried his mother on the sandy ridge, then picked up his slingshots and walked up and down the street twice, cursing in his unfamiliar accent. What he was telling the villagers was this: I am a single man, so if I kill one of you, we’re even, and if I kill two of you, I’ll be one ahead. It is my hope that everyone can live in peace. With Consumptive Six’s blinded eyes and Third

Master Fan’s shattered ear as examples, none of the villagers was willing to take them on. “Just think,” Third Sister said, “he’s lost his own mother, so what else can he fear?”

From that time on, the outsiders and the villagers coexisted peacefully despite the grudges each carried. My third sister and Birdman Han met nearly every day at the spot where he had laid the partridges at her feet. At first, the meetings appeared unplanned, but before long they had turned into outdoor trysts, one waiting for the other, no matter how long it took. Third Sister’s feet trampled the grass in that spot until it stopped growing altogether. As for Birdman Han, he would simply show up, toss birds at her feet, and leave without a word. Sometimes it would be a pair of turtledoves, sometimes a game hen, and once he brought a huge bird that must have weighed thirty pounds. Third Sister was barely able to carry it home on her back; even Third Master Fan, the wisest man around, had no idea what kind of bird it was. All I can say is, I’d never tasted anything quite so delicious in my life. Naturally, the taste came to me indirectly, through my mother’s milk.

Taking advantage of his close relationship with our family, Third Master Fan cautioned Mother to pay heed to what was going on between my third sister and Birdman Han. His words had a demeaning, foul quality. “Young niece, your third daughter and that bird-catcher… ah, it’s a corruption of public morals, and it’s more than the villagers can stand!” Mother said, “She’s just a girl.” To which Third Master Fan replied, “Your daughters are different from other girls their ages.” Mother sent Third Master Fan off with, “You go back and tell those gossips they can to go to hell!”

Reproaching Third Master Fan was one thing, dealing with Third Sister was another: when she came home with a half-dead red-crowned crane, Mother took her aside for a serious talk. “Lingdi,” she said, “we can’t keep eating somebody else’s birds.” “Why not?” Lingdi asked. “For him, shooting down a bird is easier than catching a flea.” “But they’re still his birds, no matter how easily he comes by them. Don’t you know that people expect favors to be returned?” “I’ll repay him one day,” Third Sister said. “Repay him with what?” Mother demanded. “I’ll marry him,” Third Sister said lightly. “Lingdi,” Mother replied somberly, “your two elder sisters have already caused this family to lose more face than anyone could imagine. This time I am not going to give in, no matter what you say.” “Mother,” Lingdi said with rising indignation, “that’s easy for you to say. If not for Birdman Han, could he look like he does today?” She pointed to me, then pointed to the son of the Sima family. “Or him?” Mother looked into my ruddy face and then at the red-cheeked Sima baby, and didn’t know what to say. After a moment, she said, “Lingdi, from today on, we won’t eat any more of his birds, no matter what you say.”

The next day, Third Sister came home with a string of wild pigeons and, displaying her pique, flung them down at Mother’s feet.

The eighth month seemed to arrive out of nowhere. Flocks of wild geese filled the sky heading south and settled on the marshes southwest of the village. The villagers and outsiders all converged on them with hooks and nets and other time-tested methods to reap a wild goose harvest. At first it was a lush yield, and feathers floated above the village streets and lanes. But the wild geese were not to be so easily victimized forever, and they began roosting in the farthest, deepest reaches of the marshes, places even foxes found inhospitable; that cancelled out the villagers’ hunting strategies. And still Third Sister came home every day with a wild goose; some dead, others still alive, and no one knew how Birdman Han managed to catch them.

Faced with cruel realities, Mother was forced to compromise. If we refused to eat the birds Birdman Han caught for us, we’d all have developed signs of malnourishment, like most of the villagers: edema, asthmatic breathing, eyes with flickering light, just like will-o’-the-wisps. Eating Han’s birds meant only that to the list of sons-in-law, which included the leader of a musket band and a specialist in blowing up bridges, was now added an expert bird-catcher.

On the morning of the sixteenth day of the eighth month, Third Sister went to her usual trysting place; at home we awaited her return. By then we were getting a little tired of cooked goose, with its grassy flavor, and were hoping that Birdman Han might present us with a change in diet. We didn’t dare hope that Third Sister would bring home another of those oversized, delicious birds, but a few pigeons or turtledoves or wild ducks wouldn’t be asking too much, would it?

Third Sister came home empty-handed, her eyes red from crying. Mother asked what was wrong. “Birdman Han was dragged off by armed men in black uniforms on bicycles,” she said.

A dozen or so young men had been taken away with him, tied up and strung together like so many locusts. Birdman Han had struggled mightily, the powerful muscles in his arms bulging as he strained to break the ropes binding him. The soldiers had hit him on his buttocks and waist with rifle butts and kicked him in the legs to keep him moving. Anger had welled up in his eyes, which were so red they seemed on the verge of spewing blood or fire. “Who said you could arrest me?” Birdman Han shouted. The squad leader scooped up a handful of mud and rubbed it in Birdman Han’s face, temporarily blinding him. He howled like a trussed-up wild animal. Third Sister ran after them, then stopped and yelled, “Birdman Han -” After they’d moved off down the road, she ran after them again, stopped and yelled, “Birdman Han -” The soldiers turned to look at Third Sister and laughed maliciously. At the end, Third Sister shouted, “Birdman Han, I’ll wait for you.” “Who the fuck asked you to wait?” he shouted back.

That noon, as we looked down at a pot of wild herb soup so light we could see ourselves in it, we – that included Mother – realized how important Birdman Han had become in our lives.

For two days and nights Third Sister lay sprawled on the kang, crying without end. Nothing Mother tried to get her to stop worked.

On the third day after Birdman Han was taken away, Third Sister got up off the kang, barefoot, shamelessly tore open her blouse, and went outside, where she jumped up into the pomegranate tree, bending the pliant branch into a deep curve. Mother ran out to pull her down, but she leaped acrobatically from the pomegranate tree onto a parasol tree, and from there to a tall catalpa tree. From high up in the catalpa tree she jumped down onto the ridge of our thatched roof. Her movements were amazingly nimble, as if she had sprouted wings. She sat astride the roof ridge, staring straight ahead, her face suffused with a radiant smile. Mother stood on the ground below looking up and pleading pitifully, “Lingdi, Mother’s good little girl, please come down. I’ll never interfere in your life again, you can do whatever you please…” No reaction from Third Sister. It was as if she had changed into a bird, and no longer understood human language. Mother called Fourth Sister, Fifth Sister, Sixth Sister, Seventh Sister, Eighth Sister, and the little Sima brat out into the yard, where she told them all to shout up at Third Sister. My sisters called out to her tearfully, but Third Sister ignored them. Instead, she began pecking at her shoulder, as if preening feathers. Her head kept turning, as if on a swivel; not only could she peck her own shoulder, she could even reach down and nibble at her tiny nipples. I was sure she could reach her own buttocks and the heels of her feet if she wanted to. There wasn’t a spot anywhere she could not reach with her mouth if she felt like it. In fact, as far as I was concerned, as she sat astride the roof ridge, Third Sister had already entered the avian realm: she thought like a bird, behaved like a bird, and wore the expression of a bird. And as far as I was concerned, if Mother hadn’t asked Third Master Fan and some strong young men to drag her down with the help of some black dog’s blood, Third Sister would have sprouted wings and turned into a beautiful bird – if not a phoenix, a peacock; and if not a peacock, at least a golden pheasant. But whatever kind of bird she became, she would have spread her wings and flown off in pursuit of Birdman Han. But the end result, and the most shameless outcome, was: Third Master Fan sent Zhang Mao-lin, a short, agile fellow everyone called The Monkey, up onto the ridge with a bucket of black dog’s blood; he sneaked up behind Third Sister and drenched her with the blood. She sprang to her feet and spread her arms to soar into the sky, but merely tumbled off the roof and landed on the brick path below with a thud. Blood streamed out of a deep gash in her head, the size of an apricot, and she passed out.

Weeping uncontrollably, Mother grabbed a handful of grass and held it to Third Sister’s head to staunch the flow of blood. Then, with the help of Fourth Sister and Fifth Sister, she cleaned off the dog’s blood and carried her inside, laying her on the kang.

At around dusk Third Sister came to. With tears in her eyes, Mother asked, “Are you all right, Lingdi?” Third Sister looked up at Mother and appeared to nod her head, but maybe not. Tears seeped from her eyes. “My poor, abused child,” Mother said. “They’re taking him to Japan,” Lingdi said frostily, “and he won’t be back for eighteen years. Mother, I want you to make an altar for me. I am now a Bird Fairy.”

The comment struck Mother like a thunderbolt. A welter of mixed feelings filled her heart. As she gazed into the now demonic face of Third Sister, there was so much she wanted to say; but not a single word emerged.

In the brief history of Northeast Gaomi Township, six women have been transformed into fox, hedgehog, weasel, white snake, badger, and bat fairies, all a result of love denied or a bad marriage; each lived a life of mystery, earning the fearful respect of others. Now a Bird Fairy had appeared in my house, which both terrified and disgusted Mother. But she didn’t dare say anything that went against Third Sister’s wishes, for a bloody precedent had been set in the past: a dozen or more years earlier, Fang Jinzhi, the wife of the donkey dealer, Yuan Jinbiao, was caught in the arms of a young man in the graveyard. Members of the Yuan family beat the man to death, and then beat Fang Jinzhi to within an inch of her life. Overwhelmed by shame and anger, she took arsenic, but was saved when someone forced human waste down her throat. When she came around, she said she was possessed by a fox fairy and asked that an altar be set up for her. The Yuan family refused. From that day on, the family’s woodpile often caught fire; their pots and pans and other kitchenware frequently broke apart for no apparent reason; when the old man of the family tipped over his wine decanter, out came a lizard; when the old woman of the family sneezed, two front teeth came flying out of her nostrils; and when the family boiled a pot of meat-filled jiaozi dumplings, what came out of the water instead were toads. The Yuans finally gave in and set up an altar for the fox fairy and installed Fang Jinzhi in a meditation room.

The meditation room for the Bird Fairy was set up in a side room. With my fourth and fifth sisters in tow, Mother cleaned up the bits and pieces left behind by Sha Yueliang, swept the walls clean of cobwebs and the ceiling of dust, and then put fresh paper coverings in the windows. They put an incense table up against the northern wall and lit three sticks of sandalwood incense left over from that earlier year when Shangguan Lü had worshipped the Guanyin Bodhisattva. They ought to have put an image of a Bird Fairy up in front of the incense table, but they didn’t know what one looked like. So Mother asked Third Sister for instructions. “Fairy,” she said piously as she knelt on the floor, “where can I obtain the image of an idol for the incense table?” Third Sister sat primly in a chair, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, as if enjoying a wonderful erotic dream. Not daring to hurry or upset her, Mother asked again even more piously. My third sister opened her mouth in a wide yawn, her eyes still closed, and replied in a twittering voice somewhere between bird and human speech, making her words nearly impossible to understand, “There’ll be one tomorrow.”

The next morning, a hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed beggar came to our door. In his left hand he carried a dog-beating staff made of hollowed-out bamboo, while in his right he held a ceramic bowl with two deep chips on the rim. He was filthy, as if he’d just rolled in the dirt, or had completed a thousand-mile trudge; dirt filled his ears and was crusted in the corners of his eyes. Without a word, he walked into our parlor, freely and casually, as if it were his own home. He removed the lid from the pot on the stove, ladled out a bowlful of herbal soup, and began slurping it down. When he’d finished, he sat on the stove counter, again without a word, and scraped Mother’s face with his knifelike gaze. Despite the discomfort she felt inside, she put on a calm exterior. “Honored guest,” she said, “poor as we are, we have nothing for you. Please don’t be offended if I offer you this.” She handed him a clump of wild herbs. He refused the offer. Licking his chapped and bloody lips, he said, “Your son-in-law asked me to deliver two things to you.” But he took nothing out for us, and as we examined his thin, tattered clothes and the filthy, scaly gray skin showing through the many holes, we could not imagine where he could have hidden whatever it was he had brought for us. “Which son-in-law would that be?” Mother asked, clearly puzzled. The hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed man said, “Don’t ask me. All I know is that he’s a mute, that he can write, that he’s a wonderful swordsman, that he saved my life once, and that I repaid the favor. Neither of us is in debt to the other. And that is why no more than two minutes ago, I was wondering whether I should give you these two treasures or not. If, when I was ladling out a bowl of your soup, you, the lady of the house, had made a single rude or impertinent comment, I’d have kept them for myself. But not only did you say nothing rude or impertinent, you actually offered me a handful of wild herbs. So I have decided to give them to you.” With that, he stood up, laid his chipped bowl on the stove counter, and said, “This is a piece of fine ceramic, as rare as unicorns and phoenixes. It may be the only piece of its kind in the world. That mute son-in-law of yours did not know its value. All he knew was that it was part of the loot from one of his raids, and he wanted you to have it, maybe because it is so big. Then there is this.” He hit the floor with his bamboo staff, producing a hollow sound. “Do you have a knife?” Mother handed him her cleaver. He used it to cut almost invisible threads at each end, and the bamboo split into pieces, which opened up to let fall a painted scroll. He unrolled it, releasing the smell of mildew and decay. There in the middle of the yellowed silk was a painting of a large bird. We were stunned. The image was an exact replica of the big, incomparably delicious bird Third Sister had brought home that time. In the painting, it was standing straight, head up, looking contemptuously at us with lackluster eyes. The hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed man told us nothing about the scroll or the bird on it. Rather, he rolled it back up, laid it atop the ceramic bowl, turned, and walked out the door without a backward glance. His now freed hands hung loosely at his sides and moved stiffly in concert with his long strides.

Mother was rooted to the spot like a pine tree, and I was a knot on the trunk of that tree. Five of my sisters were like willow trees; the Sima boy an oak sapling. We stood there like a little wooded area in front of the mysterious ceramic bowl and bird scroll. If Third Sister hadn’t broken the silence with a mocking laugh, we might really have turned into trees.

Her prediction had come true. With extraordinary reverence, we carried the bird scroll into the meditation room and hung it in front of the incense table. And since the chipped ceramic bowl had such an extraordinary history, what mortal was worthy of using it? So Mother, feeling blessed by good fortune, placed it on the incense table and filled it with fresh water for the Bird Fairy.

Word that our family had produced a Bird Fairy quickly made the rounds in Northeast Gaomi and beyond. A steady stream of pilgrims seeking nostrums and predictions beat a path to our door, but the Bird Fairy saw no more than ten a day. They knelt on the ground outside the window of her meditation room, in which a tiny hole permitted her birdlike predictions for the curious and prescriptions for the infirm to filter through. The prescriptions Third Sister – I mean the Bird Fairy – dispensed were truly unique and filled with an aura of mischief. Here is what she prescribed for someone suffering from a stomach problem: A powdered mixture of seven bees, a pair of dung beetle’s excrement balls, an ounce of peach leaves, and half a catty of crushed eggshells, taken with water. And for someone in a rabbitskin cap who was afflicted with an eye disease: A paste made of seven locusts, a pair of crickets, five praying mantises, and four earthworms, spread on the palms of the hands. When the patient caught his prescription as it floated out from the hole in the window and read it, a look of irreverence appeared on his face, and we heard him grumble, “She’s a Bird Fairy, all right. Everything on this prescription is bird food.” He walked off, still grumbling, and we couldn’t help feeling ashamed of Third Sister. Locusts and crickets, they were all bird delicacies, so how were they supposed to cure human eye ailments? But while I was caught up in confusion, the man with the eye problem nearly flew down the road our way, fell to his knees beneath the window, banged his head on the ground as if he were mashing garlic stalks, and intoned repeatedly: “Great Fairy, forgive me, Great Fairy, forgive me…” His pleas for forgiveness drew mocking laughter from Third Sister inside the room. Eventually, we learned that when the garrulous man was on the road home, a hawk swooped down out of the sky and dug its talons into his head, before flying off with his cap in its clutches. Then there was a man with mischief on his mind who knelt outside the window pretending to be suffering from urethritis. The Bird Fairy asked through the window, “What ails you?” The man said, “When I urinate, it feels like I’m passing ice cubes.” Suddenly the room went silent, as if the Bird Fairy had left out of embarrassment. The lewd, daring man put his eye up to the hole in the window, but before he could see a thing, he shrieked in agony as a monstrous scorpion fell from the window onto his neck and stung him. His neck swelled up immediately, and then his face, until his eyes were mere slits, like those of a salamander.

The Bird Fairy had used her mystical powers to punish that terrible man, to the boisterous delight of the good people and the enhancement of her own reputation. In the days that followed, the pilgrims coming to be cured of ailments or have their fortunes told spoke with accents from far-off places. When Mother asked around, she learned that some had come from as far away as the Eastern Sea, and others from the Northern Sea. When she asked how they had heard about the mystical powers of the Bird Fairy, they stood there wide-eyed, not knowing what to say. They emitted a salty odor, which, Mother informed us, was the smell of the ocean. The pilgrims slept on the ground in our compound as they waited patiently. The Bird Fairy followed a schedule of her own devising: Once she had seen ten pilgrims, she retired for the day, bringing a deathly silence to the eastern side room. Mother sent Fourth Sister over with fresh water; when she entered, Third Sister came out. Then Fifth Sister went in with food, and Fourth Sister came out. This stream of girls entering and leaving dazzled the eyes of the pilgrims, who could not tell which of the girls was the actual Bird Fairy.

When Third Sister separated herself from the Bird Fairy, she was just another girl, albeit one with a number of unusual expressions and movements. She seldom spoke, squinted most of the time, preferred squatting to standing, drank plain water and thrust out her neck with each swallow, just like a bird. She didn’t eat any sort of grain, but then, neither did we, since there wasn’t any. The pilgrims brought offerings suited to the habits of a bird: locusts, silkworm chrysalises, aphids, scarab beetles, and fireflies. Some also came with vegetarian fare, such as sesame seeds, pine nuts, and sunflower seeds. Of course, we gave it all to Third Sister; what she didn’t eat was divided up among Mother, my other sisters, and the little Sima heir. My sisters, wonderful daughters all, would get red in the face over trying to present their silkworm chrysalises to others. Mother’s supply of milk was decreasing, though the quality remained high. It was during those squawking days that Mother tried to wean me from breast-feeding, but she abandoned the idea when it became clear that I’d cry myself into the grave before I’d give it up.

To express their gratitude for the boiled water and other conveniences we supplied and, far more importantly, for the Bird Fairy’s successes in freeing them from their cares and worries, the pilgrims from the oceans left a burlap sack filled with dried fish for us upon their departure. We were moved more than words can say, and saw our visitors all the way to the river. It was then that we saw dozens of thick-masted fishing boats at anchor in the slow-flowing Flood Dragon River. In the long history of the Flood Dragon River, no more than a few wooden rafts had ever been seen on the river; they were used to cross the river when it flooded. But because of the Bird Fairy, the Flood Dragon River had become a branch of vast oceans. It was the early days of the tenth month, and strong northwestern winds sliced across the river. The seagoing people boarded their boats, raised their patched gray sails, and sailed out into the middle of the river. Their rudders stirred up so much mud that the water turned murky. Flocks of silvery gray gulls that had followed the fishing boats on their way over now followed them back the way they’d come. Their cries hung over the river as they skimmed the surface one minute and soared high above it the next. A few even entertained us by flying upside down or hovering in the air. Villagers had gathered on the riverbank, initially just to gawk; but they now added their voices to the grand send-off for pilgrims who had come so far. The boats’ sails billowed in the winds, their rudders began to move back and forth, and they headed slowly down the river. They would travel down the Flood Dragon River all the way to the Great Canal, and from there to the White Horse River, which would take them to the Bohai. The trip would take twenty-one days. This information was part of a geography lesson Birdman Han gave me some eighteen years later. The visit to Northeast Gaomi Township by these pilgrims from distant lands was a virtual reenactment of the sea voyages of Zheng He and Xu Fu centuries earlier, and constituted one of the most glorious chapters in the history of Northeast Gaomi Township. And all because of a Bird Fairy in the Shangguan family. The glory dispersed the clouds of gloom in Mother’s breast; maybe she was hoping that some other animal fairy would make an appearance in the house, a Fish Fairy, for instance. But then again, maybe she wasn’t.

After the fishermen were back on their boats, an eminent guest showed up. She arrived in a sleek, black Chevrolet sedan, with hulking bodyguards, armed with Mausers, standing on each running board. She was escorted by clouds of dust from the village’s dirt road. The poor bodyguards looked like donkeys that had been rolling in the dirt. The sedan pulled up to our doorway and stopped. One of the bodyguards opened the back door. First to appear was a pearl and jade head ornament, followed by a neck, and lastly a fat torso. Both in terms of figure and expression, the woman looked exactly like an oversized goose.

In strictest terms, a goose is also a bird. But however elevated her status, when she came calling on the Bird Fairy, courtesy and reverence were expected. Nothing escaped the Bird Fairy, who knew everything in advance, so no hypocrisy or arrogance could be tolerated. The woman knelt at the window, closed her eyes, and prayed softly. Her face was the color of rose petals, so she hadn’t come for relief of an illness; jewelry sparkled from head to toe, so she hadn’t come to seek riches. What could a woman like that be seeking from the Bird Fairy? A slip of white paper floated out through the hole in the window; when the woman opened it up and read it, her face turned as red as a rooster’s cockscomb. She tossed several silver dollars to the ground, stood up, and walked off. What was written on the slip of paper? Only the Bird Fairy and the woman knew.

Visitors continued to throng to our place for days, and then they stopped. By the time the cold winter set in, we had eaten all the dried fish in the burlap sack, and once again Mother’s milk carried the taste of grass and the bark of trees. On the seventh day of the twelfth month, we heard that the largest local Christian sect would be opening a soup kitchen in Northgate Cathedral. So Mother and we children, bowls and chopsticks in hand, walked all night with groups of starving villagers into the county seat. We left Third Sister and Shangguan Lü to watch the house; since one of them was more fairy than human and the other less human than demon, they were better prepared to put up with hunger. Before leaving, Mother tossed a handful of grass to Shangguan Lü. “Mother,” she said, “if you are able to die, do so quickly. Why suffer with us this way?”

It was the first time any of us had taken the road to the county seat. By “road” I mean only that we followed a little gray path formed by the footprints of man and beast. I couldn’t tell you how that rich woman’s car had made it to our village. We trudged along in cold starlight, me standing up on Mother’s back, the little Sima heir on the back of Fourth Sister, Eighth Sister on the back of Fifth Sister, my sixth and seventh sisters walking by themselves. As midnight came and went, we heard the intermittent cries of children in the wilderness all around us. Seventh Sister, Eighth Sister, and the little Sima heir also started to cry. Mother shouted her disapproval, but even she was crying, and so were Fourth Sister and Fifth Sister, both of whom suddenly tottered and fell to the ground. But as soon as Mother picked up one and went for the other, the first one fell again. And so it went, back and forth. Finally, Mother sat on the cold ground, along with all the others, huddling together to keep warm. She shifted me around to the front and put her cold hand under my nose to see if I was still breathing. She must have thought that either the cold or hunger had taken me from her. I breathed weakly to show her I was still alive. So she raised the curtain over her breasts and stuffed a cold nipple into my mouth. It felt like an ice cube slowly melting in my mouth and turning it numb. Mother’s breast had nothing to give; no matter how hard I sucked, all I managed to draw from it were a few wispy strands of blood. It was cold, so very cold! And in the midst of that cold, mirages floated in front of the eyes of the starving people around us: a blazing stove, a pot filled with steaming chicken and duck, plate after plate of meat-stuffed buns, all that and green grass and lovely flowers. In front of my eyes were two gourd-sized breasts, overflowing with rich liquid, lively as a pair of doves and sleek as porcelain bowls. They smelled wonderful and looked beautiful; slightly blue-tinged liquid, sweet as honey, gushed from them, filling my belly and drenching me from head to toe. I wrapped my arms around the breasts and swam in their fountains of liquid… overhead, millions and billions of stars swirled through the sky, round and round to form gigantic breasts: breasts on Sirius, the Dog Star; breasts on the Big Dipper; breasts on Orion the Hunter; breasts on Vega, the Girl Weaver; breasts on Altair, the Cowherd; breasts on Chang’e, the Beauty in the Moon, Mother’s breasts… I spat out Mother’s nipple and gazed up the road a ways. A man holding a tattered goatskin torch high over his head came bounding toward us. It was Third Master Fan. He was bare to the waist, and amid the acrid stench of burning animal skin and the glare of its light, he was yelling, “Fellow villagers – do not sit down, not under any circumstances. If you sit down, you will freeze to death – come, fellow villagers – keep moving forward – to keep moving is to live, to sit down is to die -”

Third Master Fan’s heartfelt exhortation brought many people up from the illusory huddled warmth, a sure path to death, and onto their feet, moving through the cold that was their only chance of survival. Mother stood up, shifted me around to the back, picked up the wretched little Sima heir and held him in her arms, then grabbed Eighth Sister by the arm and began kicking Fourth Sister and Fifth Sister and Sixth Sister and Seventh Sister to get them to their feet. We fell in behind Third Master Fan, who had used his own goatskin jacket as a torch to light our way. What carried us forward wasn’t our feet, but our willpower, our desire to reach the county seat, to reach Northgate Cathedral, to accept God’s mercy, to accept a bowl of twelfth-month gruel.

Dozens of corpses littered the roadside on this solemn and tragic procession. Some lay with their shirts open and a beatific expression on their faces, as if to warm their chests by the passing flame.

Third Master Fan died in the first glow of sunrise.

We all ate God’s twelfth-month gruel; mine came through my mother’s breasts. I’ll never forget the scene surrounding that meal. Magpies roosted on the cross beneath the high cathedral ceiling. A train panted its way along tracks outside. Steam rose from two huge cauldrons filled with beef stew. The black-cassocked priest stood beside the cauldrons and prayed as hundreds of starving peasants formed a queue behind him. Parishioners spooned gruel into bowls, one ladle-ful apiece, regardless of the size of the bowl. Loud slurping noises attended the consumption of the gruel, which was diluted by countless tears. Hundreds of pink tongues licked bowls clean, and then the queue formed again. Several burlap sacks of cracked rice and several buckets of water were dumped into the cauldrons; this time, as I could tell from the quality of the milk, the gruel consisted of cracked rice, moldy sorghum, half-rotten soybeans, and barley with chaff.

6

On our way home after eating the twelfth-month gruel, our sense of hunger was greater than ever. No one had the strength to bury the corpses lining the path through the wilderness, nor could anyone muster the energy to even go up and take a look at them. The body of Third Master Fan was the sole exception. During the height of our crisis, a man people normally steered clear of had taken off his goatskin jacket, turned it into a torch, and, with its light and his shouts, brought us to our senses. That sort of kindness, the gift of life, can never be forgotten. So, with Mother taking the lead, the people dragged the old man’s sticklike figure over to the side of the road and covered it with dirt.

When we got back home, the first thing we saw was the Bird Fairy pacing back and forth in the yard, holding something bundled in a purple marten overcoat. Mother had to hold on to the doorframe to keep from falling. Third Sister walked up and handed her the bundle. “What’s this?” Mother asked. In an almost completely human voice, Third Sister said, “A child.” “Whose?” Mother asked, although I think she already knew. “Whose do you think?” Third Sister said.

Obviously, Laidi’s purple marten coat would only be used to bundle Laidi’s child.

It was a baby girl, dark as a lump of coal, with black eyes like those of a fighting cock, thin lips, and big pale ears that seemed out of place on her face. These characteristics were all the proof we needed of her origins: This was the Shangguan family’s first niece, presented to us by Eldest Sister and Sha Yueliang.

Mother’s disgust was written all over her face, to which the baby responded with a kittenish smile. Nearly passing out from anger, Mother forgot all about the Bird Fairy’s mystical powers and kicked Third Sister in the leg.

With a yelp of pain, Third Sister stumbled forward several steps, and when she turned her head back, there was no mistaking the look of bird rage on her face. Her hardened mouth pointed upward, ready to peck someone. She raised her arms, as if to fly. Not caring if she was bird or human, Mother cursed, “Damn you, who told you to accept her child?” Third Sister’s head darted this way and that, as if she were feeding on insects on a tree. “Laidi, you’re a shameless little slut!” Mother cursed. “Sha Yueliang, you’re a heartless thug and a bandit! All you know how to do is make a baby, not how to take care of one. You think that by sending her to me, everything will be just fine, don’t you? Well, stop dreaming! I’ll fling your little bastard into the river to feed the turtles, or toss her into the street to feed the dogs, or toss her into the marsh to feed the crows! Just you wait and see!”

Mother took the baby and ran up and down the lanes, repeating her threats to feed the turtles or dogs or crows. When she reached the river’s edge, she turned and ran out onto the street, then turned and ran back to the river. Gradually her pace slowed and her voice softened, like a tractor running out of gas. Finally, she plopped down on the spot where Pastor Malory had leaped to his death, looked up at the ruined bell tower, and muttered, “Some are dead and others have run off, leaving me all alone. How am I supposed to survive with a brood of hungry chicks needing to be fed… Dear Lord, Old Man Heaven, why don’t you say something? How am I supposed to survive?”

I began to cry, my tears falling on Mother’s neck. Then the baby girl began to cry, her tears running into her ears. “Jintong,” Mother said tenderly, “my pride and joy, please don’t cry.” She next turned her tenderness to the baby girl: “You poor thing, you should not have come. Grandma doesn’t even have enough milk for your little uncle. If I tried to feed you too, you’d both starve to death. I’m not hard-hearted, there’s just nothing I can do…”

Mother laid the baby girl, still wrapped in the purple marten coat, on the steps in front of the church door, then turned and started running for home as if her life depended on it. But she hadn’t gone ten steps when her legs stopjped moving. The baby was bawling like a pig under the knife, her cries an invisible rope that had stopped Mother in her tracks…

Three days later, our family now numbering nine, we were standing in the human trade section of the county seat marketplace. Mother carried me on her back and Sha Yueliang’s little bastard in her arms. Fourth Sister carried the little Sima brat. Eighth Sister was carried by Fifth Sister, while Sixth Sister and Seventh Sister walked alone.

In the city dump, we scrounged up some rotten greens to eat, steeling ourselves to go over to the human trade section, where Mother hung straw tallies around the necks of my fifth, sixth, and seventh sisters, then waited for a buyer to come along.

A row of simple wooden shacks with ugly whitewashed walls and roofs stood opposite us. Tinplate chimneys sticking up over the walls sent black smoke into the air, where it was carried to us on wind currents, changing shape as it came. From time to time, prostitutes, their hair undone and hanging straight down, showing plenty of cleavage, lips painted bright red, and sleepy eyes, emerged from the shacks, some carrying basins, others with buckets. They went to a nearby well to draw water. Steam rose from the mouth of the well. As they cranked the awkward pulley with soft, white hands not used to working, the rope gave off a dull twang. When the oversized bucket appeared at the mouth of the well, they stuck out a foot to hook the rim and drag it smoothly over to the lip, where a layer of ice had formed, with bumps like steamed buns or nipples. The girls ran to their shacks with the water, then ran back for more, wooden clogs clacking noisily on the ground, their freezing, partially exposed breasts emitting a sulfurlike odor. I tried looking over Mother’s shoulder, but all I could see were their dancing breasts, like opium flowers or valleys of butterflies.

We were standing on a wide street in front of a high wall that effectively kept the northwest wind away and afforded us a bit of warmth. Cowering on both sides were more people just like us – gaunt and jaundiced-looking, shivering, hungry, and cold. Men and women. Mothers and children. The men were well along in years and as shriveled as rotting wood; those who weren’t blind – and many of them were – had red, puffy, suppurating eyes. A child stood or squatted on the ground beside each of them – some boys, some girls. Actually, it was nearly impossible to tell the boys from the girls, since they all looked as if they’d just climbed out of one of the chimneys across the street – human soot. All had straws sticking up out of their collars, mostly rice straw, with dry, yellow leaves; you couldn’t help but think of autumn, of horses and the comforting fragrance and happy sounds as they chewed rice straw in the dead of night. Some were less choosy, using bristlegrass they’d picked up somewhere. Most of the women were like Mother, surrounded by a brood of children, although none had as many as she. With some, all the children had straw sticking up out of their collars; with others, only some had it. Again, it was mostly rice straw, with dry, yellow leaves that gave off the fragrance of cut grass and the aura of autumn. Above the children with the straw tallies, the heavy, drooping heads of horses, donkeys, and mules, their eyes as big as brass cymbals, their teeth straight and white, their thick, sensous, and bristly lips revealing glistening teeth, swayed back and forth.

At about noon, a horse-drawn wagon came down the official road from the southeast. The horse, large and white, proceeded with its head held high, threads of silvery mane covering its forehead. It had gentle eyes, a pink streak running down its nose, and purple lips. A red velvet knot hung down from its neck, on which a brass bell had been tied. The bell rang out crisply as the horse drew the wagon toward us, rocking back and forth. We saw a tall saddle on the horse as well as the brass fittings of the shafts. The wheels were decorated with white spokes. The canopy was made of white material that had been treated with many coats of tung oil to protect it from the elements. We’d never seen such a luxurious wagon before, and were confident that the passenger was far nobler than the woman who’d come to see the Bird Fairy in her Chevrolet sedan, confident too that the man sitting in front, in a top hat and sporting a handlebar mustache, was not your ordinary driver. His face was taut, glaring lights shot out of both eyes. He was more reserved than Sha Yueliang, more somber than Sima Ku; and maybe only Birdman Han could have been his equal, if he wore the man’s hat and clothes.

The wagon came to a slow stop, and the handsome white horse pawed the ground in a rhythmic accompaniment to the brass bell. The driver pulled back a curtain, and the person inside emerged. She wore a purple marten overcoat and a red fox stole around her neck. How I wished it had been my oldest sister, Laidi, but it wasn’t. It was a foreign woman, with a high nose, blue eyes, and a headful of golden hair. Her age? I’m afraid only her parents would know that. Following her off the wagon was a strikingly handsome, black-haired little boy in a blue student uniform and blue woolen overcoat. Everything about him said he was the foreign woman’s son. Everything except for his external appearance, which was nothing like hers.

The people around us stirred and surged toward her, like a gang of robbers. But they came to a timid halt before they reached her. “Madam, honorable lady, please buy my granddaughter. Madam, grand lady, just look at this son of mine. He’s tougher than any dog, there’s no job he can’t handle…” Men and women meekly attempted to sell their sons and daughters to the foreign woman. Mother alone remained where she was, mesmerized by the sight of the purple marten coat and the red fox stole. There was no doubt that she longed for Laidi. Holding Laidi’s child in her arms, her heart spun and tears clouded her eyes.

The aristocratic foreign woman covered her mouth with a handkerchief as she took a turn around the human market. Her heavy perfume made me and the little Sima bastard sneeze. She knelt in front of the blind old man and took a look at his granddaughter. Frightened by the red fox stole around the foreign woman’s neck, the girl wrapped her arms around her grandfather’s legs and hid behind him, staring at me through terror-filled eyes. The blind old man sniffed the air and smelled the arrival of an aristocratic woman. He reached out his hand. “Madam,” he said, “please save this child. If she stays with me, she’ll starve to death. Madam, I don’t have a cent to my name…” The woman stood up and muttered something to the boy in school uniform, who turned to the blind old man and asked loudly, “What is the girl to you?” “I’m her granddad, her useless granddad, a granddad who deserves to die…” “What about her parents?” the boy asked. “Starved, they all starved to death. Those who should have died didn’t and those who shouldn’t have did. Sir, be merciful and take her with you. I don’t want a cent from you, if you’ll only give the girl a chance for life…” The boy turned and muttered something to the foreign woman, who nodded. The boy bent over and tried to pull the girl away from her granddad, but when his hand touched her shoulder, she bit him on the wrist. The boy shrieked and jumped back. With an exaggerated shrug of her shoulders, a grin, and raised eyebrows, the woman took the handkerchief away from her mouth and put it around the boy’s wrist.

With feelings that might have been terror and might have been delight, we waited for what seemed like a thousand years; finally, the richly bejeweled, heavily perfumed woman and the youngster with the injured wrist was standing before us. Meanwhile, off to our right, the blind old man was waving his bamboo staff, trying to hit the little girl who had bitten the boy. But she kept darting out of the way, as if playing hide-and-seek, so all he ever hit was the ground or the wall. “You damned little wretch!” the old man sighed. Greedily, I breathed in the foreign woman’s fragrance; amid the fragrance of locust, I detected a trace of rose petals, and amid that fragrance, I detected the subtle fragrance of chrysanthemum blossoms. But what absolutely intoxicated me was the smell of her breasts, even with the slight but disgusting smell of lamb they exuded; I flared my nostrils and breathed in deeply. Now that the handkerchief with which she’d covered her mouth was being employed elsewhere, her mouth was exposed to view. It was a wide mouth, a Shangguan Laidi mouth, with thick, Shangguan Laidi lips. Those thick lips were covered with heavy, red, greasy paint. With its high bridge, hers somewhat resembled the

Shangguan girls’ noses, but there were differences too: the tips of the Shangguan girls’ noses were like little cloves of garlic, making them look foolish and cute at the same time, while the foreign woman’s nose was slightly hooked, which gave her a predatory look. Her short forehead filled with deep wrinkles each time she glowered at something. I knew that everyone’s eyes were fixed on her, but I can say proudly that no one’s observation of her was more meticulous than mine. And no one could know the measure of my reward. My gaze passed through the thickness of her leather wrap, allowing me to witness the sight of her breasts, which were about the same size as Mother’s. Their loveliness nearly made me forget how cold and hungry I was.

“Why are you selling your children?” the youngster asked as he raised his bandaged hand and pointed to my sisters.

Mother didn’t answer him. Did an idiotic question like that even deserve an answer? The youngster turned and muttered something to the foreign woman, whose attention was caught by the purple marten coat in which the daughter of Laidi, who lay in Mother’s arms, was wrapped. She reached out and rubbed the nap. Then she saw the pantherlike, lazily sinister gaze of the baby girl herself. She had to turn away.

I hoped that Mother would hand Laidi’s baby to the foreign woman. She didn’t have to pay us, we’d even give her Laidi’s purple marten coat. I loathed that baby girl. She was given a share of milk that belonged to me, though she didn’t deserve it. Even my twin sister, Shangguan Yunii, didn’t deserve it. So who gave her the right? What about Laidi, what’s wrong with her breasts?

The foreign woman looked at each of my sisters in turn, starting with Fifth Sister and Sixth Sister, who had straw tags sticking up out of their collars. Then she looked at Fourth Sister, Seventh Sister, and Eighth Sister, who did not have tags. They didn’t so much as glance at the little Sima bastard, but were certainly interested in me. I figured that my greatest asset was the downy yellow hair that covered my head. The way they examined my sisters was certainly peculiar. Here is the order of commands the youngster gave my sisters: Lower your head. Bend over. Kick out your leg. Raise your arms. Now wave them, front and back. Open wide, now give me an Ah – Ah! Let’s hear you laugh. Take a few steps. Now run. My sisters did everything he told them to do, while the foreign woman watched, alternating between nodding and shaking her head. Finally, she pointed to Seventh Sister and muttered something to the youngster.

The youngster told Mother – while pointing to the foreign woman – that she was Countess Rostov, a philanthropist who desired to adopt and raise a pretty Chinese girl. She has settled on this girl of yours. You are a very lucky family.

Tears nearly gushed from Mother’s eyes. She handed Laidi’s daughter to Fourth Sister, freed her arms, and wrapped them around Seventh Sister. “Qiudi, my daughter, fortune has smiled on you…” Her tears fell onto the head of Seventh Sister, who sobbed, “I don’t want to go, Mother. She has a funny smell…” “You foolish little girl,” Mother said, “that’s a wonderful smell.”

“All right, worthy sister,” the youngster interrupted impatiently. “Now we need a figure.”

“Sir,” Mother said, “since we’re giving her to this lady to raise, it’s as if my daughter has fallen into the lap of fortune. I don’t want any money… just hope you’ll take good care of her.”

The youngster translated this for the foreign woman. Then, in stiff Chinese, she said, “No, I must pay you.”

Mother said, “Sir, would you ask the lady if she could take one more, so she’ll have a sister with her?”

Again, he translated for the foreign woman. But Countess Rostov shook her head firmly.

The youngster stuffed a dozen or more pink bills into Mother’s hand and waved to the driver, who was standing beside the wagon. The man ran over and bowed to the youngster.

The driver picked up Seventh Sister and carried her over to the wagon. Not until then did she really start crying, as she reached out to us with one of her pencil-thin arms. Her sisters joined her in crying, and even the wretched little Sima boy opened his mouth and shrieked – wah – followed by a brief silence. Then another wah and another brief silence. The driver deposited Seventh Sister inside the wagon. The foreign woman followed. As the youngster was about to board, Mother ran over, grabbed him by the arm, and asked anxiously, “Sir, where does the lady live?” “Harbin,” he replied icily.

The wagon drove onto the road and quickly disappeared beyond the woods. But Seventh Sister’s cries, the ding-dong of the horse’s bell, and the woman’s fragrant breasts remained fresh in my memory.

Holding those few pink bills in her hand, Mother stood like a statue, and I became part of that statue.

That night, rather than sleep out in the open, we took a room at an inn. Mother told Fourth Sister to go out and buy ten sesame cakes. She returned instead with forty steaming boiled buns and a large packet of stewed pork. “Little Four,” Mother said angrily, “that was money earned from selling your sister!” “Mother,” Fourth Sister said through her tears, “my sisters deserve to eat at least one decent meal, and so do you.” “Xiangdi,” Mother said tearfully, “how could I possibly eat these buns and this meat?” “If you don’t,” Fourth Sister said, “just think what that means to Jintong.” This comment had the desired effect; although she was still crying, Mother ate the buns and some of the meat, in order to produce milk for me and Shangguan Laidi and Sha Yueliang’s infant daughter.

Mother fell ill.

Her body was hot as steel pulled from a quenching bucket and gave off the same unpleasant steamy smell. We sat around watching her, wide-eyed. Mother’s eyes were closed and blisters covered her lips, through which all sorts of frightful words emerged. She went from loud shouts to soft whispers, and from a joyful tone to a tragic one. God, Holy Mother, angels, demons, Shangguan Shouxi, Pastor Malory, Third Master Fan, Yu the Fourth, Great Aunt, Second Uncle, Grandfather, Grandmother… Chinese goblins and foreign deities, living people and the dead, stories we knew and some we didn’t, all came pouring nonstop out of Mother’s mouth; it swayed, gathered, performed, and was transformed before our eyes… to comprehend Mother’s afflicted ravings was to have an understanding of the universe itself; to commit Mother’s afflicted ravings to memory was to know the entire history of Northeast Gaomi Township.

The slack-skinned innkeeper, whose face was covered with moles, was alarmed by Mother’s shouts and dragged his sagging body to our room in a panic. He reached out to touch Mother’s forehead, but jerked his hand back and said anxiously, “Send for a doctor right away, or you’ll lose her!” He asked Fourth Sister, “Are you the oldest?” She nodded. “Why haven’t you sent for a doctor? Why don’t you say something, girl?” Fourth Sister burst into tears. Falling to her knees in front of the innkeeper, she said, “I beg you, uncle, save our mother.” “Girl,” the innkeeper said, “let me ask you, how much money do you have left?” Fourth Sister took the remaining bills out of Mother’s pocket and handed them to the innkeeper. “Here, uncle, this is the money we got from selling our seventh sister.”

Once the money exchanged for Seventh Sister disappeared, Mother opened her eyes.

“Mother’s eyes are open, her eyes are open!” we cried out joyously with tears in our eyes. Mother lifted a hand and stroked our cheeks, one by one. “Mother… Mother… Mother… Mother… Mother…” we said. “Granny, Granny,” the wretched little Sima heir stammered. “Her, what about her?” Mother asked as she pointed. Fourth Sister picked her up in her purple marten coat and held her out for Mother to touch. Once she was able to touch her, Mother closed her eyes; two tears squeezed out of the corners.

Hearing the sounds from the room, the innkeeper walked in with a long face and said to Fourth Sister, “I don’t want to sound cruel, girl, but F ve got my own family burdens, and the money for the room over the past couple of weeks, and the food, and the candles and oil…”

“Uncle,” Fourth Sister said, “you are this family’s great benefactor. We’ll pay you what we owe, but please don’t throw us out now. Our mother is sick…”

On the morning of February 18, 1941, Xiangdi handed a packet of money to Mother, who had just recovered from her illness. “Mother,” she said, “I’ve paid the innkeeper. This is for you.”

“Xiangdi,” Mother asked nervously, “where did you get this money?”

Fourth Sister laughed mournfully. “Mother, take my brother and sisters away with you. This is not our home…”

Mother paled, grabbing Fourth Sister’s hand. “Xiangdi, tell me…”

“Mother,” Xiangdi said, “I sold myself… I got a good price, thanks to the innkeeper, who bargained for me…”

The whorehouse madam had given Fourth Sister the sort of examination she’d have given a piece of livestock. “Too thin,” she said. “Boss lady,” the inkeeper said, “a sack of rice will take care of that!” The madam extended two fingers. “Two hundred, and that shows what a generous person I am.” “Boss lady, the girl’s mother is sick, and she has many sisters. Please give a little more…” “Ah,” the madam said, “it’s hard to do good at times like this.” But the innkeeper persisted. Fourth Sister fell to her knees. “All right,” the madam said, “I’m too softhearted. I’ll give another twenty. That’s absolutely top price.”

The news rocked Mother. Slowly she fell to the floor.

Then we heard the hoarse voice of a woman outside. “Let’s go, girl. I don’t have all the time in the world.”

Fourth Sister knelt down and kowtowed to Mother. After getting to her feet, she rubbed the head of Fifth Sister, patted the face of Sixth Sister, tugged the ear of Eighth Sister, and gave me a hurried kiss on the cheek. Then she grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. Her emotional face looked like a plum blossom in a snowstorm.

“Jintong, my Jintong,” she said. “Grow up quickly, and grow up well. The Shangguan family is in your hands now!” She then took a look around the room as sobs emerged from her throat. She covered her mouth, as if she needed to run outside and throw up. She disappeared from sight.

7

We came home expecting to find Lingdi and Shangguan Lü dead. Nothing of the sort greeted our eyes. All manner of things were going on in the yard. Two men with freshly shaved heads were sitting against the wall of the house, bent over at the work of sewing clothes. They were wizards with needle and thread. Two other men, sitting nearby, heads also freshly shaved, as caught up in their tasks as the first two, were intent on cleaning the black rifles in their hands. There were two more men under the parasol tree, one standing holding a gleaming bayonet, the other seated on a bench, his head lowered, a white cloth wrapped around his neck, white, soapy bubbles popping on his water-soaked head. The man on his feet stood with his knees bent and, from time to time, wiped his bayonet clean on his pants; he then grabbed the other man’s wet, soapy head with his free hand and took aim with his bayonet, as if looking for the right spot to bury it. Laying the blade against the scalp, soapy bubbles popping right and left, he stuck his backside nearly straight up in the air and drew the blade from one end to the other, scraping off soapy hair and leaving behind a patch of pale skin. Still another man stood where we had once stored peanuts, a long-handled ax in his hands, his legs spread wide, facing the gnarled roots of an old elm tree. Firewood was stacked behind him. He raised the ax over his head, holding it steady for a moment, as sunlight glinted off the blade, then brought it sharply down and grunted as the blade buried itself deep in the gnarled roots. Then, with one foot planted against the roots, he rocked the ax handle back and forth with both hands to free the blade. He took two steps backward, resumed his early stance, spit in his hands, and again raised the ax over his head. The gnarled roots of the elm tree cracked and split loudly, one piece flying into the air as if from an explosion. It hit Fifth Sister, Shangguan Pandi, in the chest. She shrieked. The men who were sewing and those who were cleaning their rifles all looked up. The man doing the shaving and the man cutting firewood both turned to look. The one being shaved tried to lift his head, but it was immediately pushed back down by the man with the bayonet. “Don’t move,” he said. “We’ve got some beggars,” the man cutting firewood exclaimed. “Old Zhang, we’ve got some beggars here.” A man in a white apron and a gray cap, his face a mass of wrinkles, emerged from the door of our house, almost at a crouch. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing a pair of flour-coated arms. “Elder sister,” the man said in a friendly tone, “go try somewhere else. We soldiers are on rations and have nothing left for you folks.”

“This is my house!” Mother replied icily.

Everyone in the yard abruptly stopped what they were doing. The man with the soapy head jumped to his feet, wiped his dirt-streaked face with his sleeve, and greeted us with loud grunts. It was the mute from the Sun family. He ran over to us, grunting and waving his hands to let us in on all sorts of things we could not grasp. We looked into his coarse face with puzzled looks on ours, as fuzzy thoughts began to materialize in our minds. The mute rolled his murky yellow eyes; his blubbery jowls quivered. Turning on his heel, he ran into the side room of the house and returned with the large chipped ceramic bowl and bird scroll, holding them up in front of us, as the man with the bayonet walked up. He patted the mute on the shoulder. “Do you know these people, Speechless Sun?” he asked.

The mute put down the bowl, picked up a piece of firewood, squatted down, and wrote a line of oversized, squiggly words in the sand: “SHE IS MY MOTHER-IN-LAW.”

“So, the lady of the house has returned,” the shaver said warmly. “We are Squad Five of the Railway Demolition Battalion. I’m the squad leader. My name is Wang. Please accept my apologies for occupying your house. Our political commissar has given your son-in-law a new name – Speechless Sun. He’s a good soldier, brave, fearless, a model for us all. We’ll move out of your house right away, ma’am. Old Lu, Little Du, Big Ox Zhao, Speechless Sun, Little Seventh Qin, go in and clear your things off the kang for the lady of the house.”

The soldiers put down what they were working on and went inside. They returned in a few minutes carrying bedding and wearing leggings and cotton shoes with padded soles, with rifles strapped over their arms and grenades draped around their necks; they lined up in formation in the yard. “Ma’am,” the squad leader said to Mother, “you may go in now. My men will stay out here while I report to the political commissar.” The squad of soldiers, including the man now called Speechless Sun, stood at attention, like a row of pine trees.

The squad leader ran off, rifle in hand, and we entered the house, where two bamboo and reed steamers lay atop the cookpot, and a wood fire blazed in the stove, sending steam up through the gaps in the steamers. We smelled steamed buns. The elderly cook nodded apologetically to Mother as he shoved more kindling into the stove. “I apologize for making alterations to your stove without first getting your permission.” He pointed to a deep groove under the stove and said, “That groove is better than ten bellows.” The flames were so hot it almost looked as if the bottom of the pot might melt. Lingdi, her cheeks flushed and ruddy, was sitting in the doorway, her eyes narrowed as she stared at the steam oozing up through the gaps in the steamers and spi-raling into the air above the stove, where it formed layers.

“Lingdi!” Mother shouted tentatively.

“Sister, Third Sister!” Fifth Sister and Sixth Sister shouted.

Lingdi cast us a nonchalant glance, as if we were strangers, or as if we’d never been away.

Mother led us around the neat, tidy rooms, feeling increasingly ill at ease, walking on eggshells. She decided to go back outside.

The mute made a face at us from where he stood in formation. The little Sima heir, too small to be afraid, went over to touch the soldiers’ tightly wrapped leggings.

The squad leader returned with a middle-aged, bespectacled man. “Ma’am, this is Commissar Jiang.”

Commissar Jiang was a pasty-faced man with a smooth upper lip. He wore a wide leather belt and had a fountain pen in his shirt pocket. After nodding politely to us, he took a handful of colored objects out of a little leather bag on his hip. “Here’s some candy for you youngsters.” He distributed the hard candy evenly among us; even the baby girl in the purple marten coat got two pieces, which Mother accepted for her. It was my very first taste of candy. “Ma’am,” Commissar Jiang said, “I hope you’ll agree to put this squad up in the east and west side rooms of your house.”

Mother nodded numbly.

He pulled back his cuff to check his watch. “Old Zhang,” he shouted, “are the steamed buns ready?”

“Just about,” Old Zhang replied as he ran outside.

“Feed the children first,” the commissar said. “I’ll have the clerk replace the rations for the soldiers.”

Old Zhang promised he would.

Then the commissar said to Mother, “Ma’am, our commander would like to meet you. Will you come with me?”

Mother was about to hand the baby to Fifth Sister when the commissar said, “No, bring her along.”

We followed the commissar – actually, Mother did the following; I was on her back, the baby girl was in her arms – out the lane and across the street, all the way to the gate of Felicity Manor, where two armed sentries saluted us by clicking their heels, holding their rifles vertically in their left hands and bringing their right hands across until they touched the gleaming bayonets. We walked through one corridor after another until we were in a big hall, where two bowls of steaming food sat on a purple rectangular table: one held cooked pheasant, the other cooked rabbit. There was also a basket of steamed buns so white they were nearly blue. A bearded man walked up with a smile. “Welcome,” he said, “welcome.”

“Ma’am,” the commissar said, “this is Commander Lu.”

“I understand we have the same surname,” the commander said. “We were members of the same family way back when.”

“What are we guilty of, Commander?” Mother asked.

Momentarily taken aback, the commander laughed and said, “Where did you get that idea, ma’am? I didn’t ask you here because you’d done anything wrong. Ten years ago, your son-in-law, Sha Yueliang, and I were close friends. So when I heard you’d returned, I ordered food and wine to welcome you back.”

“He’s not my son-in-law,” Mother said.

“There’s no need to hide the fact, ma’am,” the commissar said. “Isn’t that Sha Yueliang’s daughter you’re holding?” “This is my granddaughter.”

“Let’s eat first,” Commander Lu said. “You must be starving.”

“Commander,” Mother said, “we’re going home.”

“Don’t hurry off,” Commander Lu said. “Sha Yueliang sent me a letter asking me to look after his daughter. He knows how tough things are for you. Little Tang!”

A strikingly beautiful soldier ran into the room.

“Take the lady’s baby from her so she can sit down and eat.”

The soldier walked up to Mother, smiled, and reached out for the baby.

“This is not Sha Yueliang’s child,” Mother insisted. “She’s my granddaughter.”

We passed through the same corridors, crossed the same street, and walked down the same alleys on our way back home.

Over the next few days, the beautiful young soldier called Little Tang brought food and clothing to us. Included in the food were tins of animal crackers, milk powder in glass bottles, and crocks filled with honey. The clothing consisted of silks and satins, padded jackets and pants with fancy trim, even a padded cap with rabbit fur earflaps. “These,” she said, “are gifts for her from Commander Lu and Commissar Jiang.” She pointed to the baby in Mother’s arms. “Little Brother can eat the food, of course,” she said, pointing to me.

Mother gave the soldier, Miss Tang, with her apple red cheeks and apricot eyes, a look of disinterest. “Take these things away, Miss Tang. They’re too good for children from poor families.” Mother then stuck one nipple into my mouth and the other into the mouth of the baby daughter of the Sha family. She sucked contentedly; I sucked angrily. She touched my head with her hand; I kicked her in the rear, which made her cry. I also heard the soft, light sobs of my eighth sister, Shangguan Yunii, the sort of weeping that even the sun and the moon like to hear.

Miss Tang said that Commissar Jiang had given the baby girl a name. “He’s an intellectual, a graduate of Beiping’s Chaoyang University, a writer and a painter and fluent in English. Zaohua – Date Flower – how do you like that name? Please, ma’am, keep your suspicions in check. Commander Lu is doing this out of the goodness of his heart. If we wanted to simply take this child, it would be as easy as snapping our fingers.” Miss Tang took a glass baby bottle fitted with a rubber nipple out of her pocket. Then she put some honey and the milk powder into a pot – I detected the odor of the foreign woman who had taken Xiangdi away with her, and knew that the milk powder had come from a foreign woman’s breast – added hot water, stirred, and poured it into the bottle. “Don’t let her and your son fight over your milk. They’ll suck you dry sooner or later. Let me give her a bottle,” she said as she took Sha Zaohua from Mother. Zaohua held on to Mother’s nipple with her mouth, stretching it out like one of Bird-man Han’s slingshots; when finally she let go, the nipple shrank back slowly, like a leech over which boiling water has been poured, taking its own sweet time to return to normal. The pain I felt was for the nipple; the loathing I felt was for Sha Zaohua. But by then, the loathsome little demon was in Miss Tang’s arms, frantically and contentedly sucking up the imitation milk from the imitation breast. I didn’t envy her at all, since once again, Mother’s breasts were mine alone. It had been a long time since I’d slept so soundly. In my dream, I sucked to intoxication and bliss. The dream was filled with the fragrance of milk!

I owed Miss Tang a debt of gratitude. After she’d finished feeding Zaohua, she laid down the bottle and opened up the purple marten overcoat, releasing the rank smell of fox that clung to the baby. I noticed how milky white Zaohua’s skin was. I’d never imagined that someone with such a dark face could have such pale skin elsewhere. Miss Tang dressed Zaohua in the satin padded coat and the rabbit fur cap, all to transform her into a beautiful baby. She flung the purple marten coat off to the side, held Zaohua in her arms, and tossed her up in the air. Zaohua was giggling happily when Miss Tang caught her.

I felt Mother tense as she readied herself to grab Zaohua away. But Miss Tang walked over and handed her back. “This baby would make Commander Sha very happy, aunty,” she said.

“Commander Sha?”

“Didn’t you know? Your son-in-law is the garrison commander of Bohai City,” Miss Tang said, “with a complement of more than three hundred men and his own personal American Jeep.”

Miss Tang took out a red plastic comb and combed the hair of Fifth Sister and Sixth Sister. While she was combing Sixth Sister’s hair, Fifth Sister stood there gaping, her gaze like a comb that moved from Miss Tang’s head down to her feet, and then back up to her head. Then when Miss Tang was combing her hair, Fifth Sister had goose bumps all over her face and neck. When the two girls’ hair was combed, Miss Tang left. “Mother,” Fifth Sister said, “I want to be a soldier.”

Two days later, Pandi was wearing a gray army uniform. Her primary job was helping Miss Tang change and feed Sha Zaohua.

Our lives took a turn for the better. As a song from those days went:

Little girl, little girl, your worries are done,

If you can’t find a youngster, then try an old one.

As you follow your comrades out on the run,

Cabbage and stewed pork await in the sun,

While still in the pot, a hot steamy bun…

We saw precious little cabbage or stewed pork, and, for that matter, hot steamy buns. But turnips and salted fish were often on our table, as was cornbread.

“Garlic never dies in a drought, and a soldier never starves,” Mother said with a sigh. “The army has become our benefactor. If I’d known this would happen, I’d never have had to sell my children. Xiangdi, Qiudi, my poor little girls…”

During those days, the quality and amount of Mother’s milk were as high as they’d ever been. I finally climbed out of the pouch that had been my home and was able to take some twenty steps, then fifty, then a hundred; then, no more need to crawl. My tongue, too, took on a new life – I could curse with the best of them. When the Sun family mute squeezed my pecker, I cursed angrily: “Fuck you!”

Sixth Sister joined a literacy class that was held in the church. Once the droppings of the donkeys once housed there were swept away, the pews were repaired and put back in place. The winged angels were gone; maybe they’d flown away. The jujube Jesus was gone too; maybe he had gone to Heaven, or maybe he’d been stolen and taken home to become kindling. On one wall hung a blackboard with a line of large white characters. The angelic Miss Tang tapped the blackboard with her pointer.

Fight – Japan – Fight – Japan – Women were nursing children or sewing cloth soles, the hemp thread whistling, as they repeated what Comrade Tang was saying: Fight Japan – Fight Japan -

I wandered among the women, lingering in the presence of all those breasts. Fifth Sister jumped onto the stage and spoke to the women sitting below: “The masses are the water, our brother soldiers are the fish, right? Right! What do fish fear most? What do they fear? Do they fear hooks? Seahawks? Water snakes? No, what they fear most is nets! That’s right, they fear nets! What do you have on the backs of your heads? That’s right, buns. And what covers those buns? Nets.” All of a sudden, the women understood, and they began buzzing and whispering, blushing one minute, paling the next. “Cut off your buns and remove your nets. Protect Commander Lu and Commissar Jiang, and protect their demolition battalion. Who will take the lead?” Pandi raised a pair of scissors over her head and operated them with her delicate fingers, turning them into a hungry crocodile. Miss Tang said, “Just think, all you suffering women, you aunties, grannies, and sisters, we women have been oppressed for three thousand years. But now we can stand tall. Hu Qinlian, tell us, does that drunkard husband of yours, Half Bottle Nie, still dare to beat you?” The frightened young woman, baby in arms, stood up, let her gaze sweep across the heroic figures of soldiers Tang and Shangguan, and quickly lowered her head. “No,” she said. Soldier Tang clapped her hands. “Did you hear that? Women, even Half Bottle Nie no longer dares to beat his wife. Our Women’s Salvation Society is a home for women, a place dedicated to righting wrongs against women. Women, where did this life of equality and happiness come from? Did it drop from the sky? Did it rise up out of the earth? No. There is only one true source: the arrival of the demolition battalion. In the town of Dalan, in Northeast Gaomi Township, we have built a rock-solid base area behind enemy lines. We are self-reliant, we are prepared to struggle, we will improve the people’s lives, especially women’s. No more feudalism, no more superstition, but we must cut through the nets, and not just for the demolition battalion, but for ourselves. Women, cut off your buns, remove your nets, and become pageboys, all of us!”

“Mother, you first!” Pandi said as she walked up to Mother, clicking the scissors.

“Yes, the head of the Shangguan family should become a pageboy,” several women said in unison. “We will follow.”

“Mother, you go first, and give your daughter a lot of face,” Fifth Sister said.

The blood rushed to Mother’s face. She leaned over and said, “Go ahead, Pandi, cut it. If it would help the demolition battalion, I’d cut off two of my fingers, without a second thought.”

Soldier Tang led the women in a round of applause.

Fifth Sister loosened Mother’s black hair, which cascaded down past her neck, like a wisteria plant or a black waterfall. The look on Mother’s face mirrored that on the face of the nearly naked figure of the Holy Mother, Mary, on the wall. Somber, worried, tranquil, and meek, yet willing to sacrifice. The church where I was baptized still reeked of ancient, smashed donkey droppings; memories of Pastor Malory performing the rite for Eighth Sister and me floated up out of the big wooden basin. The Holy Mother never covered her breasts, but my mother’s breasts were largely hidden behind a curtain. “Go ahead, Pandi, cut it. What are you waiting for?” Mother said. And so Pandi’s scissors opened wide and bit down. Snip snip – Mother’s hair fell to the ground. She raised her head – she now sported a pageboy, her hair barely reaching her earlobes and exposing her slender neck to view. Now shorn of its weighty burden, her head seemed young and sprightly, no longer sedate, sort of impish; its movements were lively, like those of the Bird Fairy. Her face was bright red. Soldier Tang took a small oval mirror out of her pocket and held it up for Mother. Embarrassed, she cocked her head to one side; so did the image in the mirror. Shyly examining the pageboy gazing back at her, her head now several sizes smaller than before, she quickly looked away.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Soldier Tang asked.

“It’s hideous…” Mother’s voice was very low.

“Now that Aunty Shangguan has a pageboy, what are the rest of you waiting for?” Soldier Tang asked loudly.

“Cut away. Go on, cut it. Every time there’s a change of dynasty, hairstyles change. Cut mine. It’s my turn.” Snip snip. Yelps of surprise, sighs of regret. I bent over to pick up a lock of hair. It was all over the ground – black, dark brown, thick, fine. The thick hair was black and bristly. The fine hair was soft and dark brown. My mother’s was the best. You could squeeze oil out of the tips.

Those were happy days, much livelier than when Sima Ku was displaying the rubble from the bridge. The members of the demolition battalion had a wealth of talents: some sang, others danced, while still others played instruments from flutes to lutes to harps. The sleek village walls were covered with slogans written in lime water. Every morning at sunrise, four young soldiers climbed to the top of the Sima watchtower to face the sun and practice bugle calls. At first they sounded like cattle calls, but before long, they were more like puppy cries. Finally, however, the notes rose and fell, twisted this way and that, high and low, music that was pleasing to the ear. The young soldiers threw out their chests, held their heads high, and stood stiff-necked, their cheeks puffed out behind golden bugles with red tassels. Of the four buglers, one called Ma Tong was the handsomest: he had a delicate mouth, a dimple in each cheek, and large, protruding ears. He was lively and always on the move; his mouth was as sweet as honey. He made a big show of calling on twenty or more village women, his adoptive mothers. The moment they laid eyes on him, their breasts quivered, and they would have loved to stuff a nipple into his mouth. Ma Tong once came to our house to pass on some sort of order to the squad leader. At the time, I was squatting under the pomegranate tree watching ants climb up the trunk. Curious as to what I was doing, he squatted down and watched along with me. He was more caught up in the sight than I was, and was a lot more skillful in killing the ants. He even showed me how to piss on them. Fiery pomegranate blossoms formed a canopy over our heads. It was the fourth lunar month; the weather was warm, the sky blue, the clouds white. Flocks of swallows soared on lazy southern wind currents.

Mother’s prediction: A handsome, lively young man like Ma Tong is not fated to live to a ripe old age. God has given him too much already, he has drunk deeply from the well of life, and cannot look forward to a long life, with many sons and grandsons. Her prediction came true, for on one starry night, the silence was broken by a young man’s screams: Commander Lu, Commissar Jiang, spare me, I beg you, just this once… I am the sole heir of my family, my grandparents’ only grandson and my parents’ only son. If you kill me, it will be the end of my family line. Mother Sun, Mother Li, Mother Cui, all you adoptive mothers, come rescue me… Mother Cui, you have a special relationship with Commander Lu, please save me… Ma Tong’s pitiful shouts accompanied him out of town, until a single crisp gunshot brought deathly silence. The fairylike young bugler was no more. Not one of his adoptive mothers could save him. His crime: stealing and selling bullets.

The next day, a red coffin appeared on the street. A squad of soldiers placed it on a horse-drawn cart. Made of four-inch-thick cypress and covered with nine coats of shellac, it was draped with nine layers of cloth. It could be submerged in water for ten years without leaking a drop. Bullets could not penetrate the coffin, which would hold up in the ground for a thousand years. It was so heavy it took more than a dozen soldiers to pick it up on the command of a squad leader.

Once the coffin was loaded onto the cart, the tension among the troops was palpable. They shuttled back and forth at a jog, their faces taut. But then an old man with a white beard rode up on a donkey and dismounted beside the cart. He beat on the coffin and wailed. His face was awash in tears, some dripping off the tips of his beard. It was Ma Tong’s grandfather, a highly educated onetime official during the Manchu dynasty. Commander Lu and Commissar Jiang emerged and stood awkwardly behind the old man. Once he’d cried all he was going to, he turned and glared at Lu and Jiang. ‘Old Mr. Ma,” Jiang said, “you have read many books and have a firm grasp of right and wrong. We punished Ma Tong with the deepest regret.” “With the deepest regret,” Lu echoed. The old man spat in Lu’s face. “He who steals hooks is a thief. He who robs a nation is a nobleman. Fight Japan, you say, fight Japan, when all you do is engage in debauchery!” In a somber voice, Commissar Jiang said, “Sir, we are a true anti-Japanese unit that prides itself on strict military discipline. There may in fact be soldiers among us who engage in debauchery, but it isn’t us!” The old man stepped around Commissar Jiang and Commander Lu, let loose a burst of loud laughter, and walked off, his donkey following him, its head bowed low. The cart carrying the coffin fell in behind the donkey. The driver’s shouts to his horse were like the muted chirps of a cicada.

The Ma Tong incident rocked the foundation of the demolition battalion. The false sense of security and happiness was shattered. The gunshot that killed Ma Tong told us that in time of war, human lives were worth no more than those of ants. The Ma Tong incident, which, on the surface, appeared to be a victory for military discipline and justice, had a particularly negative effect on members of the demolition battalion. For days after, there was a rash of incidents involving drunkenness and fighting. The squad billeted at our house began to display signs of dissatisfaction. Squad Leader Wang said publicly, “Ma Tong was a scapegoat! What ammunition could a kid like that have sold? His grandfather was a high official and his family owns thousands of acres of rich farmland, with many donkeys and horses. He didn’t need that little bit of money. As I see it, the youngster died at the hands of those dissolute adoptive mothers of his. No wonder the old man said, ‘Fight Japan, you say, fight Japan, when all you do is engage in debauchery!’” The squad leader aired his complaints in the morning. That afternoon, Commissar Jiang showed up at our house with two military guards. “Wang Mugen,” Jiang said gravely, “come with me to battalion headquarters.” Wang glared at his troops. “Which one of you sons of bitches betrayed me?” The men exchanged nervous glances, their faces pale gray. All except the mute, Speechless Sun, who released a guttural laugh from deep in his throat, walked up to the commissar, and, with a flurry of hand gestures, told how Sha Yueliang had stolen a wife. The commissar said, “Speechless Sun, you are the new squad leader.” Speechless Sun cocked his head and stared at the commissar, who reached out, grabbed his hand, took a fountain pen out of his pocket, and wrote something on Sun’s palm. Sun bent his hand back and studied it; then he flailed his arms excitedly, as lights flashed in his brown eyes. With a contemptuous laugh, Wang Mugen said, “At this rate, the mute will be talking before long.” The commissar signaled the guards, who took their places on either side of Wang Mugen. “After you’ve finished with the millstone,” Wang shouted, “kill the donkey and eat it. You’ve forgotten how I blew up the armored train.” Ignoring the shouts, the commissar walked up and patted the mute on the shoulder. Overwhelmed by this attention, he stuck out his chest and saluted, while the sound of Wang Mugen’s shouts drifted over from the lane: “Getting me angry is the same as putting a land mine under your bed!”

The mute’s first act after being promoted to squad leader was to demand that my mother hand over his woman. At the time, she was beside the millstone behind which Sima Ku had hidden after he was wounded, crushing sulfur for the demolition battalion. A hundred yards away, Pandi was showing the women how to beat scrap metal with hammers. A hundred yards beyond Pandi, a demolition battalion engineer was working with apprentices on a bellows that required four strong men to operate, sending gusts of air into the furnace. Buried in the sand at their feet were molds for land mines. Mother’s mouth was covered by a bandanna as she led the donkey around the millstone. The smell of sulfur brought tears to her eyes and had the donkey sneezing. Sima Ku’s son and I were hunkered down in a stand of trees, carefully watched by Niandi, on Mother’s orders, who didn’t want us anywhere near the millstone. The mute, a Hanyang rifle slung across his back, swaggered over to the millstone twirling a Burmese sword that had been passed down through generations of his family. We watched him block the donkey’s way, raise the sword in Mother’s direction, and twirl it over his head, making it sing in the air. Mother was standing behind the donkey, a nearly bald broom in her hand. Her eyes were riveted on him. He showed her the palm of his hand and laughed. She nodded, as if congratulating him. A range of expressions then swept across the mute’s face. Mother shook her head, over and over and over, as if to deny whatever it was he wanted. Finally, the mute swung his arm in the air and brought his fist down on the donkey’s head. The animal’s front legs buckled and it fell against the millstone. “You bastard!” Mother screamed. “You godforsaken bastard!” A crooked smile spread across the mute’s face. He turned and swaggered off, the same way he’d come.

On the other side, the door of the smelting furnace was opened by a long hook and white-hot molten metal spilled out of the crucible, creating beautiful sparks as some of it splashed on the ground. Mother got the donkey to its feet by pulling on its ears, then walked over to where I was playing. There she removed the yellowed bandanna that covered her mouth, lifted up her blouse, and stuffed a sulfur-smoked nipple into my mouth. I seriously considered spitting out the stinky, peppery thing when Mother abruptly pushed me away, nearly jerking out my two front baby teeth. Her nipples must have been sore, but I guess she didn’t have time to worry about that. She ran toward home, the bandanna flapping in the wind. I could picture those sulfur-fouled nipples of hers rubbing against the coarse material of her blouse, the venomous liquid wetting her clothes. She seemed to radiate electricity as she ran. She was immersed in a peculiar emotion; if it was happiness, it was a decidedly painful happiness. Why was she running like that? We didn’t have to wait long for the answer.

“Lingdi! My Lingdi, where are you?” Mother shouted, from the main house all the way to the side room.

Shangguan Lü crawled out from the front room, lay belly down on the pathway, and raised her head, like a gigantic frog. Soldiers had taken over her west wing room, where five of them were lying on the millstone, heads facing the center, as they studied a thread-bound book. They looked up and noted our arrival with alarm. Their rifles were lined up against the wall and land mines hung from the rafters, black, round, and oily, like spider’s eggs, except a whole lot bigger. “Where’s the mute?” Mother asked. The soldiers shook their heads. Mother turned and rushed over to the west wing. The Bird Fairy scroll had been tossed carelessly across a now legless table, on which lay a half-eaten piece of cornbread and a green onion. The chipped ceramic bowl, which was also on the table, was filled with white bones – maybe a bird, maybe some small animal. The mute’s rifle was leaning against the wall, his grenades hung from a rafter.

We stood in the yard, filling the air with hopeless shouts. The soldiers came running out of the house, demanding to know what had happened. Just then, the mute crawled out of the turnip cellar. His clothes were covered with yellow earth and splotches of white mildew. He wore a look of fatigue and contentment.

“What a fool I was!” Mother roared, stomping her foot.

At the far end of the path in our yard, beneath a pile of dried grass, the mute had raped my third sister, Lingdi.

We dragged her out from where she lay, carried her inside, and laid her on the kang. Mother wept as she soaked her sulfurous bandanna in water and meticulously cleaned Lingdi from head to toe. Her tears fell onto Lingdi’s body and onto her own breast, which still showed the teeth marks; interestingly, Lingdi was smiling. A bewitching light flashed in her eyes.

As soon as she heard the news, Fifth Sister rushed home and stared down at Third Sister. Without a word, she ran outside, took a grenade from her belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the east wing. No sound emerged; it was a dud.

The mute was to be executed on the very spot where Ma Tong had been shot: a foul-smelling bog at the southern edge of the village, with rotting rush in the middle and lined with piles of garbage. The trussed-up mute was dragged over to the edge of the bog, facing a firing squad of a dozen or more men. After an emotional speech for the benefit of the civilians who had gathered to watch, Commissar Jiang told the soldiers to cock their rifles. Ready, the commissar ordered, Aim… Shangguan Lingdi, all in white, floated over before the bullets had a chance to leave the rifle barrels. She seemed to be walking on air, like a true fairy. It’s the Bird Fairy! someone shouted. Memories of the Bird Fairy’s legendary history and miraculous deeds flooded the minds of everyone present. The mute was forgotten. The Bird Fairy had never been more beautiful as she danced in front of the crowd, like a stork parading through the marshes. Her face was a palette of bright colors: like red lotuses, like white lotuses. Her figure was in perfect harmony, her distended lips absolutely alluring. She danced her way up to the mute; after stopping in front of him, she cocked her head and gazed into his face. He responded with a foolish grin. She reached out and stroked his nappy hair and pinched his garlic-bulb nose. Finally, to everyone’s surprise, she reached down and grabbed the thing between his legs that had caused all the trouble. Turning to face the onlookers, she giggled. The women looked away; the men just stared foolishly, lecherous grins on their faces.

The commissar coughed and said, his words strained and unnatural, “Move her away from there and get on with the execution!”

The mute raised his head and let out a series of weird grunts, maybe to register his objection.

The Bird Fairy’s hand kept rubbing the thing down there, her fleshy lips twisted into a greedy but natural and healthy look of pure desire. The commissar’s command fell on deaf ears.

“Young lady,” the commissar asked in a loud voice, “was it rape or was it consensual?”

The Bird Fairy did not reply.

“Do you like him?” the commissar asked her.

Again the Bird Fairy did not reply.

The commissar went into the crowd to find Mother. “Aunty,” he said, obviously embarrassed, “in your view… as I see it, maybe we ought to just let them become husband and wife… Speechless Sun was wrong… but not wrong enough to forfeit his life

Without a word, Mother turned and walked back through the crowd, slowly, as if her back were weighed down by a stone tablet. The people followed her with their eyes, until they heard wails tear from her throat. They couldn’t watch any longer.

“Untie him,” the commissar ordered halfheartedly before turning and leaving the scene.

8

It was the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the day when the Herder Boy and Weaving Maid meet in the Milky Way. It was hot and sticky, the air so thick with mosquitoes they crashed into one another. Mother spread out a straw mat and we lay down to listen to her feeble mutterings. A drizzle came up as dusk fell; Mother said those were the Weaving Maid’s tears. The humidity was high, with only an occasional gust of wind. Above us, pomegranate leaves shimmied. Soldiers in both the east and west wings lit homemade candles. Mosquitoes feasted on us, despite Mother’s attempts to drive them away with her fan. All the magpies in the world chose this date to fly up into the clear blue sky, sheets and sheets of them, all beak to tail, with no space between them, forming a bridge across the the Milky Way to let the Herder Boy and Weaving Girl meet yet another year. Raindrops and dewdrops were their tears of longing. Amid Mother’s mutterings, Niandi and I, plus the little Sima heir, gazed up at the star-filled sky, trying to find those particular stars. Even though Eighth Sister, Yunii, was blind, she too tipped her face heavenward, her eyes brighter than the stars she could not see. The heavy footsteps of sentries returning from their watch sounded in the lane. Out in the fields, frogs croaked a loud chorus. On the bean trellis a katydid sang its song: Yiya yiya dululu-yiya yiya dululu. As the night deepened, large birds flew roughly and rashly into the air; we watched their white, fuzzy silhouettes and listened to feathery wings brushed by the wind. Bats squeaked excitedly; drops of water fell from the leaves and beat a tattoo on the ground. Sha Zaohua lay cradled in Mother’s arms, breathing evenly. In the east wing, Lingdi screeched like a cat, and the mute’s hulking silhouette flickered in the lamplight. They had been married. Commissar Jiang had officiated at the wedding, and now the meditation room for the Bird Fairy had become a wedding chamber where they could release their passions. The Bird Fairy ran often out into the yard half dressed, and one soldier who was driven to distraction by peeping at her exposed breasts nearly had his neck broken by the mute. “It’s late, time to go to bed,” Mother said. “It’s hot inside, and the room is swarming with mosquitoes,” Sixth Sister said. “Can’t we sleep out here?” “No,” Mother said, “the dampness is bad for you. Besides, there are those in the sky who pick flowers… I think I heard one of them say, There’s a pretty little flower, let’s pick it. Wait till we come back, we’ll get it then. You know who they were? Spider spirits, whose only purpose is to spoil young virgins.”

We lay on the kang, but could not sleep. Except, strangely enough, Eighth Sister, who fell fast asleep, a line of slobber in the corner of her mouth. We choked on smoke from the mosquito incense. Lamplight from the soldiers’ rooms came through their windows and fell on ours, making it possible for us to see bits and pieces of what was out in the yard. A saltwater fish Laidi had sent us was smelling up the latrine outside with its rank rotting odor. She’d sent back lots of valuable things, such as satin fabrics, furniture, and antique curios, all confiscated by the demolition battalion. The bolt on the door creaked. “Who’s there?” Mother shouted as she picked up the cleaver she kept at the head of the kang. No response. Maybe we were hearing things. Mother put the cleaver back where she kept it. From the floor at the head of the kang brief bursts of red light flickered at the end of the smoking mugwort rope that was supposed to keep mosquitoes away.

All of a sudden, a thin figure rose from the head of the kang. Mother let out a frightened shriek. So did Sixth Sister. The dark figure fell across the kang and clapped its hand over Mother’s mouth. She struggled as she groped for the cleaver. But just as she was about to swing it, she heard the figure call out:

“Mother, it’s me, Laidi

The cleaver fell from Mother’s hand onto the straw mat atop the kang. Her eldest daughter was home! Eldest Sister was on her knees on the kang, sobbing. We looked into her shadowy face, and I saw it was covered with little bright spots. “Laidi… my first little girl… is it really you? You’re not a ghost, are you? I’m not afraid even if you are. Let me look at you…” Mother groped around at the head of the kang for a match.

First Sister stayed her hand and said softly, “Don’t light the lamp, Mother.”

“Laidi, you heartless thing. Where have you and that fellow Sha been all these years? You’ve made things so hard on your mother.”

“There’s so much to tell you, Mother,” she said. “But first, where’s my daughter?”

Mother picked up little Sha Zaohua, who was fast asleep, and handed her to Eldest Sister. “You call yourself a mother? You may know how to have a baby, but not how to raise it. Dumb animals do better than that… because of her, your fourth sister and seventh sister…”

“One of these days, Mother, I’ll repay you for all you’ve done for me,” First Sister said. “And I’ll make it up to Fourth Sister and Seventh Sister.”

Just then Sixth Sister came up to us. “First Sister!” she yelled.

Laidi lifted her head away from Sha Zaohua and touched Sixth Sister’s face. “Sixth Sister. Where’s Jintong? And Yunii? Ah, Jintong, Yunii, do you still remember your big sister?”

“If not for the demolition battalion,” Mother said, “this whole family would have starved.”

“Mother,” First Sister said, “the men named Jiang and Lu are no good.”

“They treat us well, so we should not say bad things about them.”

“That is part of their scheme. They sent Sha Yueliang a letter demanding his surrender. If he didn’t, they said, they’d take our daughter hostage.”

“How can that be?” Mother asked. “What does a little baby have to do with war?”

“Mother, my reason for coming home this time was to rescue my daughter. I came with a dozen or more soldiers, and we have to head back immediately. We’ll let Jiang and Lu enjoy their empty victory for now. Mother, our debt to you is higher than a mountain, and I hope you’ll let me repay you someday. The night is long, the dreams many. Now I must leave…”

But before she had a chance to finish, Mother grabbed Sha Zaohua out of her arms. “Laidi!” she said angrily. “Don’t think you can win me over so easily. Think how you dumped her on me back then. Well, I spared nothing in raising her this far, so don’t you think you can just come and take her away. All this stuff about Commander Lu and Commissar Jiang is a pack of lies. You want to be a mother now, now that you and Monk Sha have spent all your passion, is that it?”

“Mother, he’s a brigade leader in the Japanese Imperial Forces, commanding over a thousand troops.”

“I don’t care how many men he has or what kind of leader he is,” Mother said. “Have him claim this child in person, and tell him I’ve kept all those rabbits he hung from the tree for him.”

“Mother,” First Sister said, “this involves thousands of troops and their mounts, so don’t interfere.”

“I’ve interfered in things half my life already. Thousands of troops and their mounts or thousands of horses and their riders, it doesn’t matter to me. All I know is, I raised Zaohua, and I’m not about to hand her over to somebody else.”

First Sister reached out and snatched the child away, then jumped down off the kang. “You damned turtle spawn!” Mother cursed. “How dare you!”

Zaohua began to cry.

Mother jumped down off the kang and ran after them.

The crackle of gunfire erupted in the yard. Then we heard chaos on the roof above us, as someone screamed and rolled off onto the ground. A foot crashed through our ceiling, letting in clumps of mud and the glare of starlight. There was loud confusion outside, with gunfire, the clang of bayonets, and a soldier’s shout: “Don’t let them get away!”

A dozen or more soldiers of the demolition battalion came running with kerosene torches, turning the yard from night to day. Someone behind the house shouted, “Tie him up! Now let’s see you run away, my little uncle.”

Commander Lu of the demolition battalion strode into the yard and said to Laidi, who was cowering against the wall, holding tightly on to Sha Zaohua, “This is no way to act, is it, Mrs. Sha?”

Zaohua was crying.

Mother walked out into the yard.

We sprawled against the windowsill to watch.

A man lay alongside the path, his body full of holes, blood forming little puddles that snaked out in all directions. The offensive smell of warm blood. The choking smell of kerosene. Blood oozing from the bullet holes bubbled in places. He wasn’t dead yet: one of his legs twitched spasmodically, he was biting the ground, and his neck was twitching. We couldn’t see his face. Leaves on the trees were like gold or silver foil. The mute was standing in front of Commander Lu, waving his sword and shouting. The Bird Fairy came outside, dressed this time, wearing what could only have been one of the mute’s uniform shirts, which came down to her knees but only half covered her breasts and belly. Her exposed ankles were long and snowy white, the calves sleek and muscular. Her lips were parted, her eyes glazed as she gazed at the torches. A squad of soldiers came into the yard with three bound men in olive drab uniforms. One of them, his face ashen, had been wounded in the shoulder; it was still bleeding. Another was hobbling on a gimp leg. The third man was straining to raise his head, but failing, since the men behind him were pulling it down as low as it would go by a rope around his neck. Commissar Jiang came into the yard, flashlight in hand, the lens covered by a piece of red satin, which turned the light a muted red. Mother’s bare feet slapped the ground – pa-da pa-da – crushing the tiny mounds of dirt raised by worms. Showing no fear at all, she demanded of Commander Lu, “What’s going on here?”

“This has nothing to do with you, aunty,” he said.

Commissar Jiang flashed his red-satined light in Laidi’s face. She stood there like a poplar.

Mother walked up to First Sister and ripped Zaohua out of her hands. Cradling the baby in her arms, she said in a calming voice, “Good girl, don’t be afraid. Granny’s here.”

Zaohua’s cries softened until she was merely sobbing softly.

First Sister held her arms as if the baby were still in them, as if she were petrified. It was an ugly sight. Her face was ghostly white, her gaze frozen. She was wearing a green man’s uniform, under which her full breasts jutted out straight.

“Mrs. Sha, you people could not have received more humane treatment than we gave you. We didn’t try to force you to accept our reorganization,” Commander Lu said. “But you should not have gone over to the Japs.”

“That is for the menfolk to decide. I’m just the man’s wife.”

Commissar Jiang said, “We hear that Mrs. Sha is Commander Sha’s chief of staff.”

“All I know,” First Sister said, “is that I’ve come for my daughter. If you’ve got the balls, go do battle with him. Taking a child hostage is not how a man worthy of the name would go about it.”

“Mrs. Sha, you’ve got it all wrong,” Commissar Jiang said. “We have nothing but affection for Miss Sha. Just ask your mother. Ask your sisters. Heaven and earth are our witnesses. I’ll tell you what we’re all about. We love the child, and everything we do is in her best interests. What we don’t want for this lovely little girl is that she have traitors for parents.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” First Sister said. “You’re wasting your breath. But do what you want with me, since I am your prisoner.”

The mute swung into action. He looked particularly menacing in the light of all those torches. His skin was nearly black, and glossy, as if covered with badger fat. Ah-ao – ah-ao ah-ao. Eyes of a wolf, nose of a boar, ears of an ape, face of a tiger. He roared, raised his thick, powerful arms, clenched his fists, and struck a martial pose. He kicked the body of the now dead soldier alongside the path, then turned to the three prisoners. One after the other, he drove his fist into their faces, each punch accompanied by an Ah-ao! Then he went back and did it all over again. Ah-ao! Ah-ao! Ah-ao! Each punch more devastating than the one before. The last one sent the man with his head pushed down crumpling to the ground. Commissar called a halt to his frenzy: “Speechless Sun, you are not to hit our prisoners!” The mute just grinned and pointed to Shangguan Laidi, then to himself. He walked up to Laidi, grabbing her bony shoulder with his left hand and gesturing to the crowd with his right. The Bird Fairy was looking at the torches, absorbed by their light. Laidi raised her left hand and gave the mute a resounding slap on his right cheek. The mute released her shoulder and rubbed his cheek, looking puzzled, as if not knowing where the blow had come from. First Sister then raised her right hand and gave him another resounding slap on his left cheek, this one harder than the first. The mute rocked on his heels, while First Sister stumbled backward, recoiling from the slap. Her lovely brow arched, her phoenix-like eyes widened, as she said through clenched teeth, “You bastard, you ravaged my little sister!”

“Take her away!” Commander Lu ordered. “She’s not only a turncoat, but a savage as well!”

Soldiers rushed up and grabbed First Sister by the arms. “How stupid can you get, Mother?” she shouted. “Third Sister is a phoenix, yet you married her to that mute!”

Just then a soldier rushed up and announced breathlessly, “Commander, Commissar, Commander Sha’s troops have reached Shalingzi Township.”

“Stay calm, men. I want each company commander to follow our original plan and start laying land mines.”

Commissar Jiang said, “Aunty, for your and the children’s protection, come with us to battalion headquarters.”

“No,” Mother said, shaking her head. “If we’re going to die, it will be on our own kang.”

Commissar Jiang waved a squad of soldiers over next to Mother and another squad into the house. “Dear Lord,” Mother shouted, “open your eyes and see what’s happening.”

Our family was locked into a wing of the Sima house, with sentries at the door. Gas lanterns in the adjoining room were lit, and someone inside was shouting. Beyond the village, the popping of gunshots was endless.

Commissar Jiang walked unhurriedly into our quarters carrying a lamp with a glass shade. The black smoke choked him and made our eyes water. After putting the lamp down on the table, he said, “Why are you all standing? Please, sit, have a seat.” He pointed to chairs lined against the wall. “Aunty,” he said, “this is quite an extravagant place your second son-in-law owns.” He sat down, resting his hands on his knees, and flashed us a sardonic grin. First Sister sat across a table from Commissar Jiang and said with a pout, “Commissar Jiang, inviting a deity in is one thing. Getting rid of it is quite another!” Jiang laughed. “Given all the trouble it took to get the deity here, why would I want to get rid of it?” “Mother,” First Sister said, “go ahead, sit down. They won’t do anything to you.”

“We don’t plan to do anything to any of you,” Commissar Jiang said with a smile. “Please, aunty, have a seat.”

Still cradling Zaohua, Mother sat in a chair in the corner. Eighth Sister and I, who were holding on to Mother’s clothes, stood next to her. The young Sima heir leaned his head against Sixth Sister’s shoulder, a ribbon of drool running down his chin. Sixth Sister was so sleepy she rocked back and forth. Mother grabbed her by the arm and told her to sit down. She opened her eyes, looked around, and immediately started to snore. Commissar Jiang took out a cigarette and tapped the end against his thumbnail. Then he searched his pockets, looking for a match. He didn’t find one, and First Sister found that worth celebrating. He walked over to the lamp, stuck the cigarette in his mouth, leaned over the flame, closed his eyes, and began puffing. The flame danced, the tip of the cigarette turned red and glowed. He straightened up, took the lit cigarette out of his mouth, and squeezed his lips shut; two streams of dense smoke snaked out of his nostrils. The thud of explosions somewhere beyond the village rattled the windows. The glow of fires lit up the night sky. Every few seconds we heard the cries or shouts of men out there, sometimes clear as a bell. Commissar Jiang smiled through it all, staring at Laidi as if throwing down a challenge.

Laidi fidgeted in her seat as if she was sitting on needles, making the legs of her chair creak and groan. The blood had drained from her face and her hands shook as she gripped the arms of the chair.

“Commander Sha’s cavalry troops have entered our minefield,” Commissar Jiang said sympathetically. “What a pity, all those fine horses.”

“You… you’re all living in a dream world…” First Sister stood up with her hands on the arms of the chair, but fell back into it as an even denser series of explosions split the air.

Commissar Jiang stood up and rapped leisurely on the wooden lattice separating the room from the main house and said, as if to himself, “Korean pine, all of it. I wonder how many trees were cut down just to build the Sima manor.” He raised his head to look at First Sister. “How many would you say? Support beams, crossbeams, doors and windows, flooring, walls, tables and chairs and benches…” She squirmed in her chair. “I’d say at least one whole forest!” Commissar Jiang remarked, a note of distress in his voice, as if a forest lay before him, reduced to stumps and scattered branches. “Sooner or later, these accounts will be settled,” he said dejectedly, putting the denuded forest behind him, as he walked up to First Sister and stood, legs spread, his right hand on his hip, wrist at a sharp angle. “Of course,” he said, “as we see it, Sha Yueliang is not someone dead set on being a turncoat. He was once a glorious anti-Japanese resistance fighter, and if he renounces his recent past, we are more than willing to call him comrade. Mrs. Sha, he’ll soon be our prisoner, and it will be your job to make him see the light.”

First Sister slumped against the back of the chair. “You’ll never catch him!” she said in a high-pitched voice. “Make no mistake about that! His Jeep can outrun a horse any day!”

“Well, let’s hope so,” Commissar Jiang said as he dropped his angled arm and brought his legs together. He took out a cigarette and offered it to Laidi, who shrank away from it. He brought it even closer. Laidi looked up at the mysterious smile on Commissar Jiang’s face and reached out with a trembling hand, taking the cigarette in two nicotine-stained fingers. Commissar Jiang raised his own lit cigarette to his mouth and blew the ashes off the tip, turning it bright red. He then held the lit end out for Laidi. She looked into his face again. He was still smiling. Laidi seemed flustered as she put the cigarette to her lips and touched the tip to the lit end of Jiang’s cigarette. We heard what sounded like her lips smacking. Mother was staring woodenly at the wall, Sixth Sister and young master Sima were half asleep, Sha Zaohua wasn’t making a sound. A cloud of smoke rose in front of First Sister’s face. She raised her head and leaned back, her chest sagging. The fingers holding her cigarette were wet, like loaches just scooped out of the water. The fiery tip of her cigarette burned its way quickly toward her mouth. Her hair was a mess, deep lines spoked out from the corners of her mouth, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Slowly the smile on Commissar Jiang’s face disappeared, like water on a piece of hot metal, shrinking in on itself, until it was a bright dot the size of a needlepoint, before disappearing with a brief sizzle. The smile on Commissar Jiang’s face retreated up toward his nose and vanished with a brief snap. He flipped away his cigarette, which had nearly burned down all the way to his fingers, ground it out with the tip of his shoe, and strode out of the room.

We heard him bellow in the adjoining room, “We have to catch Sha Yueliang. If he finds his way into a rathole, we must go in and dig him out.” Then we heard the sound of a telephone receiver being slammed down.

With pity in her eyes, Mother looked over at First Sister, who sprawled in the chair looking as if all the bones in her body had been removed. She walked over, took her daughter’s nicotine-stained hand, and examined it; she shook her head. First Sister slid down to her knees on the floor and wrapped her arms around Mother’s legs. When she looked up, her lips were twitching like a suckling infant. A strange noise emerged from between those lips. At first I thought she was laughing, but I quickly realized she was crying. She wiped her tears and snot on Mother’s legs. “Mother,” she said, “if you want to know the truth, not a day went by that I didn’t think of you and my sisters and my brother…”

“Do you regret what you did?” Mother asked her.

First Sister did not react right away. Then she shook her head.

“That’s good,” Mother said. “The Lord points out the way for you, and regret only makes Him unhappy.”

Mother handed Zaohua to First Sister. “Take a look at her.”

First Sister stroked Sha Zaohua’s dark little face. “Mother,” she said, “if they execute me, you’ll have to raise her for me.”

“Even if they don’t execute you,” Mother said, “I’m still the one who should raise her.”

First Sister handed the girl back to Mother, who said, “You hold her for a while. I need to feed Jintong.”

Mother walked over to the chair and lifted up her blouse. She bent over at the waist, while I kneeled on the chair and began sucking. “In fairness, that Sha fellow is no coward, and I’m obliged to accept him as my son-in-law, if for no other reason than the fact that he hung all those rabbits from the tree. But he’ll never amount to a whole lot. How do I know that? The fact that he hung all those rabbits from the tree. The two of you together are no match for that Jiang fellow. With Jiang, it’s a needle hidden in downy cotton. He’s got teeth in that belly of his.”

In the darkness just before daybreak, a flock of exhausted magpies that had served as a bridge across the Milky Way flew down and perched on our roof ridge, where they chirped listlessly and woke me up. I saw Mother sitting in a chair holding Sha Zaohua, while I was sitting on Laidi’s ice-cold knees, her long arms wrapped tightly around my waist. Sixth Sister and the Sima heir were sleeping head to head, just as before. Eighth Sister was resting against Mother’s leg. There was no light in Mother’s eyes, and the corners of her mouth drooped from exhaustion.

Commissar Jiang walked in, took one look at us, and said, “Mrs. Sha, would you like to go see Commander Sha?”

First Sister pushed me off and jumped to her feet. “You’re lying!” she cried hoarsely.

Commissar Jiang crinkled his brow. “Lying?” he said. “Why would I lie?” He walked up to the table, bent over, and blew out the lamp. Red rays of sunlight immediately striped in through the open window. With a courteous – but maybe it wasn’t meant to be courteous – wave of his hand, he said, “After you, Mrs. Sha. As I told you before, we don’t want to block every single avenue. If he admits the error of his ways and sets back out on the right path, we will welcome him as vice commander of the demolition battalion.”

First Sister walked stiffly to the door, but turned back to look at Mother before going outside. “You may come, too, aunty,” Commissar Jiang said. “And your other children as well.”

We passed under all the many gates of the Sima manor and through several identical courtyards. In the fifth courtyard, we saw a dozen or more wounded soldiers lying on the ground. The female soldier, Miss Tang, was bandaging the leg of one of the wounded men, assisted by my fifth sister, Pandi. She was so focused on the task before her, she didn’t even see us. Mother whispered to First Sister, “That’s your fifth sister.” First Sister glanced over at her. “We paid a stiff price,” Commissar Jiang said. A large wooden gate had been placed on the ground in the sixth courtyard to serve as a makeshift bier for several corpses, their faces covered with white cloth. “Our Commander Lu heroically gave up his life. That has been an incalculable loss.” He bent down and removed the cloth from a blood-spattered, whiskered face. “The men begged us to let them skin Commander Sha alive, but that goes against our policy. Mrs. Sha, our good faith is enough to move even the ghosts and spirits, wouldn’t you say?” At the seventh courtyard, he led us around a screen wall, and we found ourselves standing on the high steps of the Felicity Manor main gate.

Soldiers of the demolition battalion were running back and forth on the street, their faces covered with dust. Several of them were leading a dozen or more horses, from east to west, while several others were supervising several dozen civilians who were pulling a Jeep by rope, from west to east. The two groups halted when they met in front of the gate, and two men who looked like junior officers came running up. They stopped, saluted, and reported to Commissar Jiang, at a pitch that sounded like an argument. One reported that they’d captured thirteen warhorses; the other reported that they’d captured an American Jeep. Unfortunately, the radiator was blown, so it had to be towed over. Commissar Jiang complimented them on a job well done. As their commander’s praise washed over them, they stood there, chests out, heads up, lights flashing in their eyes.

Commissar Jiang then led us over to the church, the gate of which was guarded by sixteen armed sentries. Jiang raised his hand, and the sentries slapped the butts of their rifles, clicked their heels, and snapped off a rifle salute. There we were, a bunch of women and children, suddenly transformed into generals on a military inspection.

At least sixty, maybe more, prisoners in olive drab uniforms were crowded into the southeast corner of the main hall. White mushrooms sprouted on the ceiling above, which was crumbling and mildewed from rain that had leaked through. A squad of four soldiers with assault rifles guarded the prisoners. They were holding magazines of ammunition in their left hands, while four of the fingers of their right hands were wrapped around rifle stocks that were as smooth and glossy as a maiden’s thigh; their fifth finger was on the curved trigger. They stood with their backs to us. On the floor behind them was a pile of leather belts, looking like a nest of snakes. The only way the prisoners could walk was by holding up their trousers.

The corners of Commissar Jiang’s mouth turned up in a barely detectable smile. He coughed lightly, maybe to announce his presence, I don’t know. Lazily, the prisoners raised their heads and looked at us. In an instant, their eyes flashed – once for some, twice for others, five, six, or seven times, nine at the most, for yet others. Those will-o’-the-wisp flickers of recognition must have been intended for Shangguan Laidi, if, as Commissar Jiang asserted, she was Commander Sha’s right arm. Whatever complex emotions were running through Laidi’s heart turned her eyes red and her face ashen; her head slumped onto her chest.

The prisoners reminded me of the black donkeys belonging to the musket band. When they were corralled in the church yard, they too huddled together in a corner – twenty-eight individual donkeys becoming fourteen pairs: you nibble my rectum while I gently bite you in the flank. Mutual concern, mutual protection, mutual aid. Where had this intimate group of donkeys met its end? Who was it that wiped them out? At Ma’er Mountain by Sima Ku’s guerrilla forces? Or was it at Biceps Mountain by Japanese secret police? Mother was brutalized on that sacred day when I was baptized. They were all members of the musket band, my mortal enemies. Now you should be punished by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Commissar Jiang cleared his throat. “Men of the Sha Brigade,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

Again the prisoners raised their heads. Some obviously wanted to reply, but didn’t dare to. Others had no desire to reply.

Commissar Jiang’s bodyguard said, “What’s wrong, little uncles, lost your voices? Our political commissar asked you a question.”

“Be civil to them!” Commissar Jiang rebuked his bodyguard, who blushed and lowered his head. “Brothers,” he continued, “I know you’re hungry and thirsty, and any of you with stomach problems are probably suffering right now, seeing spots in front of your eyes and breaking out in a cold sweat. Try to hold on just a little longer. Food is on its way. We don’t have a lot of the things we need here, so the food isn’t very good. We’ve prepared a pot of mung bean soup to take care of your thirst and cool you down. At noon there’ll be white flour steamed buns and fried horsemeat with chives.”

Happiness was written on the prisoners’ faces, and some of the men worked up the courage to talk quietly among themselves.

“There are lots of dead horses,” Commissar Jiang said, “all of them fine animals. What a shame you had to stumble into our minefield. When you’re eating horsemeat in a little while, who knows, you may be eating your own mounts, even though, as people say, ‘mules and horses may be as fine as gentlemen, but they’re still only mules and horses.’ So go ahead, eat as much as you can, since man is at the top of the food chain.”

He was still talking about horses when a pair of elderly soldiers carried in a large cauldron, grunting from the effort. Two younger soldiers staggered along behind, each carrying a stack of bowls from their navel all the way up under their chins. “Here’s the soup! Soup!” the old soldiers shouted, as if someone were blocking their way. The young soldiers strained to see over their stacked bowls to find a place to put them down. The two old soldiers squatted down and put the cauldron on the floor, nearly sitting down in the process. The young soldiers kept their upper bodies straight as they crouched down, placed the stacks of bowls on the floor, and pulled their hands out from under them. The stacks rocked back and forth. Freed of their burden, the men stood up and mopped their sweaty brows.

Commissar Jiang picked up a large wooden ladle and stirred the soup. “Did you add brown sugar?” he asked the old soldiers. “Reporting, sir, we couldn’t find brown sugar, so we went out and got a jar of granulated sugar. We took it from the Cao house. Old lady Cao didn’t want to part with it, and held on to it for dear life…”

“That’s enough. Dish it out to the men here!” Commisar Jiang said as he tossed down the ladle. Then, suddenly seeming to recall our presence, he turned and asked invitingly, “Would you each like a bowl?”

With a smirk, Laidi said, “The commissar did not invite us here to drink mung bean soup, did he?”

“Why shouldn’t we?” Mother said. “Old Zhang, each of the girls and I will have a bowl.”

“Mother,” Laidi said, “what if it’s poisoned?”

Commissar Jiang had a big laugh over that. “Mrs. Sha, you have quite an imagination.” He picked up the ladle, scooped out some of the soup, held it high, and let it drip back into the vat to show off the appearance and the aroma. Then he threw down the ladle again. “We put a packet of arsenic and two packets of rat poison into this soup. One drink and your stomach will burst within five paces, you’ll crumple to the ground in six, and blood will spurt from all the holes in your body. Now, anyone dare to drink it?”

Mother stepped up, picked up a bowl and dusted it with her sleeve, then reached for the ladle, with which she filled the bowl with soup and handed it to First Sister, who refused it. So Mother said, “Then this bowl is mine.” After blowing on the liquid, she took a couple of sips. After a couple more tentative sips, she filled three more bowls, which she handed to Sixth Sister, Eighth Sister, and the young Sima. “Our turn,” shouted some of the prisoners. “Give us some. We’ll drink three bowls of the stuff, poisoned or not.”

With the two old soldiers manning the ladles, the two younger ones passed out the bowls. The armed guards moved off to the sides and faced us at an angle; we could see their eyes, which were fixed on the prisoners, now on their feet and lining up, holding up their pants with one hand and ready to take bowls of mung bean soup with the other. Once they had the bowls in hand, they looked down cautiously, fearful that the hot liquid might burn their fingers. One by one, they returned slowly to the rear of the hall, where they hunkered down, freeing up both hands to hold the soup, which they blew on to cool before starting to eat. A puff of air, followed by noisy sips, the practiced way to eat without burning the inside of your mouth. Young Sima, lacking that experience, slurped up a mouthful, which he could neither spit out nor swallow, and wound up with a burned mouth. While he was taking his bowl of soup, one of the prisoners said softly, “Second Uncle…” The old soldier with the ladle looked up and stared into the young face before him. “Don’t you recognize me, Second Uncle? It’s me, Little Chang…” The old soldier reached out and whacked the back of Little Chang’s hand with the ladle. “Who are you calling Second Uncle?” he scolded. “You’ve got the wrong man. I’ve got no nephew who’s willing to be a turncoat and wear a green uniform!” With a cry of Aiya, Little Chang dropped his bowl onto his foot, giving him a nasty burn. With another Aiya, he let go of his pants to reach down and rub his foot; his pants slipped to his knees, revealing a dirty, tattered pair of underpants. A third Aiya escaped as he reached down to pull up his trousers and stand up straight; tears filled his eyes.

“Old Zhang, you have your orders!” Commissar Jiang said angrily. “Who gave you the authority to strike a prisoner? Report to the sergeant-at-arms. Three days in the stockade!”

“But,” Old Zhang protested, “he called me Second Uncle…”

“I’m betting you are his second uncle,” Commissar Jiang said. “Why try to hide it? If he does what he’s told, he can become a member of our demolition battalion. How’s that burn, youngster? We’ll have a medic put some salve on it in a little while. Meanwhile, he spilled his soup, so give him another bowl, and add a few extra beans.”

The unfortunate young nephew hobbled back to the rear of the hall with his thicker-than-average soup, as the prisoners behind him in line stepped up to get their bowls.

Now all the prisoners were drinking their soup, filling the church with loud slurps. For the moment, the old and young soldiers had nothing to do; one of the young ones was standing there licking his lips, the other had his eyes fixed on me. One of the older ones was scraping the bottom of the vat with his ladle, the other had taken out a tobacco pouch and pipe and was preparing to take a smoke break. Mother put her bowl up to my lips, but I pushed it away, disgusted by its coarseness. My mouth was adapted to one thing and one thing only: her nipples.

First Sister snorted disdainfully. Commissar Jiang was looking at her, and she made sure she rewarded him with an expression of contempt. “I guess I should have a bowl of mung bean soup too,” she said.

“Of course you should,” Commissar Jiang said. “Just look at your face. It reminds me of a dry eggplant. Old Zhang, a bowl of soup for Mrs. Sha, and hurry. Make it thick.”

“I want it thin,” First Sister said.

“Then make it thin,” Commissar Jiang said.

Holding the bowl up to her mouth, First Sister took a sip. “You did add sugar,” she said. “Commissar Jiang, why don’t you have a bowl. Your throat must be dry after all that talk.”

Commissar Jiang reached up and pinched his throat. “Indeed it is. Fill up a bowl for me, Old Zhang. Thin.”

With the bowl in his hands, Commissar Jiang discussed the qualities of mung beans with First Sister. He told her that in his hometown there was a sandy variety that softened as soon as the water boiled, whereas the local beans didn’t even begin to soften for a couple of hours. Once they’d exhausted the subject of mung beans, they moved on to soybeans. You’d have thought they were bean experts; after they’d discussed nearly all varieties of beans, and Commissar Jiang had started in on peanuts, First Sister threw her bowl to the floor and spat out savagely, “What sort of trap are you setting, Jiang?”

“Mrs. Sha,” he said, “don’t overreact. Let’s go, what do you say? We’ve kept Commander Sha waiting long enough.”

“Where is he?” First Sister asked derisively.

“A place you remember only too well, of course,” Jiang replied.

There were more sentries at our gate than at the church.

One group was stationed at the door to the east wing, under the command of the mute, Speechless Sun. He was sitting on a log beside the wall, playing with his sword. The Bird Fairy was perched in the crotch of the peach tree, holding a cucumber and nibbling it with her front teeth.

“Go on in,” Commissar Jiang said to First Sister. “Try to talk some sense into him. We’re hoping he’ll abandon the dark and walk into the light.”

The moment First Sister entered the east wing, she let out a shriek.

We ran in after her. Sha Yueliang was hanging from the rafters. He was wearing a green wool uniform and a pair of shiny, knee-length leather boots. I remembered him as being of average height; but hanging there, he struck me as being exceptionally tall.

9

I climbed down off the kang and threw myself into Mother’s lap before my eyes were even fully opened. Savagely, I pulled up her blouse, grabbed the mound of her breast with both hands, and took her nipple between my lips. Something spicy filled my mouth, and tears filled my eyes. I spat out the nipple and looked up, puzzled and a bit put out. Mother patted me on the head and smiled apologetically. “Jintong,” she said, “you’re seven years old, almost a grown man. It’s time to stop the breast-feeding.” Before the echo of her words had died out, I heard a peal of crisp, bell-like laughter from Eighth Sister, Shangguan Yunii.

A curtain of darkness lowered before my eyes. I looked heavenward just before I fell to the floor. Suddenly forlorn, I noticed that Mother’s breasts, their nipples covered with a peppery coating, looked like a pair of red-eyed doves arching into the sky. In order to wean me, Mother had tried smearing her nipples with the juice of raw ginger, liquified garlic, smelly fish oil, even a bit of rancid chicken droppings. This time she’d used pepper oil. Each time she’d tried to wean me in the past, she’d relented when I fell to the floor as if struck dead. This time I lay on the floor, waiting for her to go in and wash her nipples, as she always had in the past. Scenes from the scary dream I’d had during the night unfolded before my eyes: Mother had sliced off one of her breasts and tossed it to the floor. “Go ahead, suck it!” she’d said. “Suck it!” A black cat had run up, snatched it in its mouth, and run off with it.

Mother picked me up off the floor and sat me down hard next to the dining table. She wore a grave expression. “Say what you like, but this time I’m going to wean you!” she said firmly. “Do you plan to suck until you reduce me to a piece of dry kindling, is that it, Jintong?”

The young Sima, Sha Zaohua, and my eighth sister, Yunii, were sitting around the table eating noodles. They turned toward me with looks of scorn. Shangguan Lü was sitting on a pile of cinders beside the stove, sneering at me. Her windblown skin was like coarse, flaky toilet paper. Young Sima lifted a long, squirmy noodle out of the bowl with his chopsticks and held it up in the air, trying to dazzle me. Then, like a worm, the noodle squirmed into his mouth – disgusting!

Mother put a bowl of steaming noodles down on the table and handed me a pair of chopsticks. “Here, eat,” she said. “Try some noodles your sixth sister made.”

Sixth Sister, who was feeding Shangguan Lü beside the stove, turned and gave me a hostile look. “Still breast-feeding,” she said, “at your age. You’re hopeless!”

I flung the bowl of noodles at her.

She jumped up, covered with squirmy noodles. “Mother,” she growled, “see how you’ve spoiled him!” Mother smacked the back of my head.

I ran over and threw myself against Sixth Sister, clawing at her breasts. I could hear them cry out in protest, like baby chicks being bitten by rats. She doubled over in pain, but I held on for dear life. Her long, thin face turned yellow. “Mother,” she cried out, “look at him, Mother!”

Mother attacked my head. “You swine!” she cursed. “You dirty little swine!”

I lost consciousness.

When I came to, I had a splitting headache. Young Sima was still playing with his noodles, unconcerned about what was going on around him. Sha Zaohua looked up from behind her bowl, noodles stuck to her face, and gazed timidly at me. But I couldn’t help feeling that there was respect in her eyes. Sixth Sister, her breasts hurting, sat in the doorway weeping. Shangguan Lü was staring malignantly at me. My mother, seemingly ready to burst from anger, was studying the mess of noodles on the floor. “You little bastard! You think these noodles come easy?” She scooped up a handful of the noodles – no, what she scooped up was a nest of squirmy worms – then pinched my nose shut, forcing me to open my mouth, and crammed the worms inside. “Eat those, every last one of them! You’ve sucked the marrow out of my bones, you little monster!” I threw it all up, broke free from her grasp, and ran out into the yard.

Shangguan Laidi was out there, still wearing the ill-fitting black coat she hadn’t taken off in four years, bent at the waist as she honed the edge of a knife on a whetting stone. She flashed me a friendly smile. But then her expression changed. “This time I’ll kill him for sure,” she said, grinding her teeth. “His time has come. I’ve got this knife sharper than the north wind, and cooler, and I’m going to make sure he understands that murderers pay with their lives.”

I was in no mood to pay her any attention, since everyone assumed she’d gone off her rocker. But I knew she was just faking madness, I just didn’t know why. That time in the west wing, where she was staying, she sat high up on top of the millstone, her legs, covered by the black robe, hanging straight down. She told me what it was like being part of Sha Yueliang’s marauding band, how she’d lived like royalty, and all the strange and wonderful things she’d seen. She’d owned a box that could sing and a glass that could bring distant objects right up under her nose. At the time I thought that was all crazy talk, but it wasn’t long before I saw one of those boxes that could sing. Shangguan Pandi had brought one home with her. During her stay with the demolition battalion, she’d lived a life of ease and comfort, and had gotten fat in the process, like a pregnant mare. She carefully placed the object, with its brass morning glory, on the kang and said proudly: “Come over here, all of you. This will open your eyes!” She removed the red cloth covering and revealed the box’s secret. First she cranked a handle round and round, and then she said, with a mysterious smile, “Listen, this is what a foreigner sounds like when he laughs.” The sound that came out of the box at that moment nearly frightened us out of our wits. The foreigner’s laughter sounded like the crying of ghosts in tales we’d heard. “Get that thing out of here!” Mother demanded. “Right this minute! I don’t want any box of ghosts in this house!” “Mother,” Shangguan Pandi said, “that brain of yours is too old-fashioned. This is a gramophone, not a box of ghosts.” From out in the yard, Laidi said, “The needle’s worn out. It needs a new one.”

“Mrs. Sha,” Fifth Sister said sarcastically, “you needn’t show off around us. You’re a damned slut!” she added said hatefully. “They should have had you shot, and would have if not for me.”

“I could have killed him, and would have if you hadn’t stopped me!” First Sister said. “I want you all to look at her. Does she look like some young virgin to you? That Jiang fellow nibbled on those big breasts of hers until they looked like a pair of dried turnips.”

“Dogshit turncoat! Female turncoat!” Instinctively, Fifth Sister protected her sagging breasts with her arms, as she kept the curses coming: “Stinking wife of a dogshit turncoat!”

“Get out of here, both of you!” Mother said, spitting mad. “Go out and die somewhere, and don’t let me see you again!”

The episode instilled in me respect for Shangguan Laidi. She was relaxing in the donkey trough, which had been lined with straw, and said to me in a friendly voice, “You little idiot!” “I’m no idiot!” I defended myself. “But I think you are.” She abruptly lifted up her black coat, raised her legs high, and said in a muffled voice, “Look here!”

A ray of sunlight lit up her thighs, her belly, and her breasts, like a sow’s teats.

“Come here.” I saw a smile on her face at the far end of the trough. “Come here and suckle on me. Mother let my daughter suckle on her, so I’ll let you suckle on me, and that way no one owes anyone anything.”

I nervously walked up to the trough, where she was now arched like a leaping carp. She reached out and grabbed my shoulders and covered my head with the lower half of her black coat. My world turned dark. And in that darkness I began to grope, curious and tense, mysterious and enthralling. “Here, over here.” Her voice sounded far away. “Little idiot.” She stuffed one of her nipples into my mouth. “Start sucking, you little whelp. You’re not a true Shangguan. You’re a little hybrid bastard.” The bitter-tasting dirt on her nipple melted in my mouth. Her underarm sweat nearly smothered me. I felt I was suffocating, but she held my head in her hands and pushed her body up against mine, as if trying to cram every last bit of her large, hard breast into my mouth. When I reached the point where I could no longer stand it, I bit down on her nipple. Jumping to her feet, she sent me sliding down her body and out from under the coat, to lie huddled at her feet, waiting for the kick I knew was coming. Tears coursed down her dark, gaunt cheeks. Her breasts heaved beneath the black coat, and brought forth gorgeous feathers, until they looked like a pair of birds that had just mated.

Regretting what I’d done, I reached out to touch the back of her hand with my finger. She lifted her hand and rubbed it against my neck. “Good little brother,” she said softly, “don’t tell anybody what happened today.”

I nodded, and meant it.

“I’m going to share a secret with you,” she said. “My husband came to me in a dream and said he’s not dead. His soul has attached itself to the body of a blond, light-skinned man.”

My imagination ran wild over my secret encounter with Laidi as I walked down the lane, where a squad of five demolition soldiers had run out like madmen. A veil of ecstasy covered their faces. One of them, a fat man, shoved me. “Hey, little fellow, the Jap devils have surrendered! Run on home and tell your mother that Japan has surrendered. The War of Resistance is over!”

Out on the street I saw crowds of soldiers whooping and hollering and jumping around, a group of puzzled civilians among them. It was 1945; the Jap devils had surrendered, and I had been denied the breast. Laidi had given me hers, but she’d had no milk, and her nipple had been covered by a layer of cold, odorific grime; just thinking about that brought feelings of despair. My third brother-in-law, the mute, ran out from the northern entrance to the lane carrying the Bird Fairy. Mother had kicked him and the other soldiers in his unit out of our house after the death of Sha Yueliang. So he put them up in his own house, and the Bird Fairy had gone with him. But though they moved away, the Bird Fairy’s shameless cries often emerged late at night from the mute’s house and meandered all the way to our ears. Now he was carrying her toward us. She lay in his arms with her swollen belly, dressed in a white coat that looked to have been tailored from the same pattern as Laidi’s black coat; only the color was different. Seeing the Bird Fairy’s coat reminded me of Laidi’s coat, which in turn reminded me of Laidi’s breasts, and they reminded me of the Bird Fairy’s breasts. Among Shangguan women, the Bird Fairy’s breasts had to be considered top of the line. They were delicate, lovely, perky, with slightly upturned nipples as nimble as the mouth of a hedgehog. Does saying that the Bird Fairy’s breasts were top of the line mean that Laidi’s were not? I can only give a vague response. Since the moment I was conscious of what was going on around me, I’d discovered that the range of beauty in breasts is wide; while one should never lightly say that a particular pair is ugly, one can easily say that a pair of breasts is beautiful. Hedgehogs are beautiful sometimes; so are baby pigs.

The mute put the Bird Fairy down in front of me. “Ah-ao, ah-ao!” He waved his massive fist, which was the size of a horse hoof, under my nose, but in a friendly way. I understood him: his “Ah-ao, ah-ao!” grunts meant the same as “The Jap devils have surrendered!” He took off down the street like a bull.

The Bird Fairy cocked her head and looked at me. Her belly was terrifyingly big, like that of a gigantic spider. “What are you, a turtledove or a wild goose?” she chirped. Maybe she was asking me, and maybe she wasn’t. “My bird flew away. My bird, it flew away!” There was a look of panic on her face. I pointed to the street. She stuck her arms out straight, pawed at the ground with her bare feet, and, with a chirp, took off running toward the street. She was moving fast. How could such a huge belly not slow her down? If not for that belly, she probably could have taken wing. She ran into the crowd on the street like a powerful ostrich.

Fifth Sister came running home; she too was pregnant, and her bulging breasts had leaked into her gray uniform. In contrast to the Bird Fairy, she was a clumsy runner. The Bird Fairy flapped her arms when she ran; Fifth Sister supported her belly when she ran. Fifth Sister was gasping for breath, like a mare that’s pulled a wagon up a hill. Pandi had the fullest figure of all the Shangguan daughters, and she was also the tallest. Her breasts were fierce and intimidating; as if filled with gas, they went peng-peng when thumped. First Sister’s face was covered by a black veil; she was wearing her black coat. In the dark of night, she climbed into the Sima compound from a nearby ditch and followed the smell of sweat to a brightly lit room. The flagstones in the yard were slippery, covered by green moss. Her heart was in her throat and about to beat its way out through her mouth. The hand in which she carried the knife cramped up, and she had a fishy taste in her mouth. She peered through the crack in a latticed door, and what she saw nearly made her soul take flight and her heart stop: a large white candle, wax dripping down its sides, shone brightly and sent fleshy shadows dancing on the walls. Scattered on the stone floor were Shangguan Pandi and Commissar Jiang’s clothes; a coarse wool sock was lying alongside the apricot yellow toilet. Pandi, naked as the day she was born, was sprawled atop the dark, gaunt body of Jiang Liren. First Sister burst into the room. But she hesitated as she looked down at her sister’s raised buttocks and the indentation at the base of her backbone, glistening with sweat. Her enemy, the man she wanted to kill, was protected. Raising her knife, she screamed, “I’m going to kill you two, I’m going to kill you!” Pandi rolled over and off the bed, while Jiang Liren grabbed the blanket and rushed First Sister, knocking her to the ground. Ripping the veil off her face, he laughed. “I thought it might be you!”

Fifth Sister stood in the doorway shouting, “The Japanese have surrendered!”

She dragged me way back out to the street. Her hand was sweaty – sour, salty sweat. I detected along with the smell of sour sweat the odor of tobacco. That smell came from her husband, Lu Liren. In order to commemorate the victory over the Sha Band, in which Commander Lu had heroically sacrificed his life, Jiang Liren had changed his name to Lu Liren. The smell of Lu Liren was scattered across the street via Fifth Sister’s hand.

Out on the street, the demolition battalion was celebrating noisily, many of the soldiers crying openly and banging into one another. One of them climbed to the top of the shaky bell tower, as the crowd down below swelled. People came with gongs, or with milking goats, even chunks of meat bouncing around on large lotus leaves. A woman with bells tied to her breasts really caught my attention. She was performing a strange dance that made her breasts jiggle, causing the bells to ring and ring and ring. The people kicked up a cloud of dust; they shouted themselves hoarse. The Bird Fairy, who was in the middle of the crowd, darted glances back and forth; the mute raised his fist and pounded a man beside him. Eventually, a group of soldiers went into the Sima compound and reemerged carrying Lu Liren over their heads. They tossed him into the air, as high as the tips of nearby trees, and when he came down, they caught him and tossed him back into the air… Hai-ya! Hai-ya! Hai-yal! Fifth Sister, holding her belly and crying, shouted, “Liren! Liren!” She tried to squeeze in among the soldiers, but was driven back.

The sun raced across the sky, seemingly frightened by the din below, and sat on the ground, resting against the trees on the sandy ridge. More relaxed now, it was bright red, blistery, and sweaty; it steamed and panted like an old man, as it observed the crowd on the street.

At first, one man fell in the dust. Then a whole string of them fell. Slowly, the dust settled back to earth and covered the men’s faces and hands and sweat-stained uniforms. A whole string of men lay stiffly in the dust under the red rays of the sun. As dusk fell, cool breezes blew over from the marshes and reed ponds; the crisp whistle of a train crossing the bridge was carried on the wind. People cocked their ears to listen. Or maybe I was the only one who did that. The War of Resistance had been won, but Shangguan Jintong had been cast off by his beloved breasts. I thought about death. I felt like jumping down a well, or into the river.

One person in the crowd, wearing a khaki jacket, rose slowly out of the dust. She was up on all fours as she began clawing at the dirt in front of her, digging out something the same color as her jacket, the same color as everything else out there on the street. She dug out one, and then another. They made sounds like giant salamanders. In the midst of the celebration over victory in the War of Resistance, Third Sister, the Bird Fairy, had brought a pair of twin boys into the world.

The Bird Fairy and her babies made me momentarily forget my own troubles. Slowly I moved up closer to her to get a look at my new nephews. I had to step over the legs of men lying in the road, and the heads of others; finally, I was close enough to see the wrinkled skin – face and body – of the two dirt-colored little guys: they were bald, like a pair of lush green gourds. Crying with their mouths wide open made for a frightening sight, and for some unfathomable reason, I imagined their bodies covered with a thick layer of fishy scales. I backed off, carelessly stepping on a soldier’s hand as I did. But instead of hitting me, or yelling at me, he just grunted softly and slowly raised himself into a sitting position; from there he slowly got to his feet, and when he wiped the dust from his face, I saw it was Lu Liren, Fifth Sister’s husband. He was looking for his wife, who was struggling to sit up in the grass by the wall; she rushed into his arms, wrapped her arms around his head, and rubbed it frantically. “We won, we won, victory is ours! We’ll call our child Shengli – Victory,” Fifth Sister said.

By this time, the sun was exhausted, like an old man about to call it a day and get some sleep. The moon spat out rays of clear light, giving it the look of an anemic yet beautiful widow. With his arm around Fifth Sister, Lu Liren started to walk off just as Sima Ku entered the village at the head of his anti-Japanese commando battalion.

The battalion included three companies. First came the cavalry company, comprised of sixty-six horses of mixed Xinjiang and Mongol breed and their riders, all armed with American submachine guns. Next came the bicycle company, comprised of sixty-six Camel brand bicycles, the riders armed with German weapons. Third in line was the mule company, comprised of sixty-six powerful, fast-moving mules and their riders, all armed with Japanese M-38 carbines. There was also a small special unit, comprised of thirteen camels carrying bicycle repair equipment and spare parts, plus weapon repair tools, spare parts, and ammunition. They also carried Sima Ku and Shangguan Zhaodi, plus their daughters, Sima Feng and Sima Huang. Riding on the back of yet another camel was an American by the name of Babbitt. Perched atop the last camel was dark-skinned Sima Ting; he was wearing army trousers, a lavender satin shirt, and a frown.

Babbitt, who had gentle blue eyes, soft blond hair, and red lips, wore a red leather jacket over heavy cotton, multipocketed trousers, and deerskin boots. Uniquely attired, he sat high up on the back of his camel, rocking back and forth as he entered the village with Sima Ku and Sima Ting.

Sima Ku’s battalion swept into the village like a whirlwind. The six horses in the front rank were black, and were ridden by handsome young soldiers in woolen khakis; their brass buttons had been polished to a glittering sheen, as had their riding boots, the submachine guns in their hands, and the helmets on their heads; even their horses’ black flanks shone. The horses slowed down as they approached the spot where soldiers lay sprawled in the dirt; they held their heads high and began to prance as their riders fired their weapons into the darkening sky, a sparkling, eardrum-pounding chain of tracer bullets that sent leaves fluttering to the ground. Lu Liren and Shangguan Pandi, spooked by the burst of gunfire, stepped away from one another. “Which unit are you?” Lu Liren asked, raising his voice. “Your granddad’s unit,” one of the riders fired back. His words still hung in the air when a fusillade of bullets nearly grazed Lu Liren’s head. He sprawled inelegantly on the ground, but quickly got back to his feet and shouted, “I’m commander and political commissar of the demolition battalion, and I demand to see your commanding officer!” His shout was swallowed up by another fusillade of bullets that swept the open space around them. Soldiers of the demolition battalion staggered to their feet. The horsemen spurred their horses forward, breaking ranks to avoid the confusion in the street ahead. The horses were short and extremely nimble; as they stepped over and around the men lying on the ground and those who had barely stood up, only to be knocked down again, they looked like a pack of lithe tomcats on the prowl. As soon as the first rank passed, the others followed close on their heels, sending the standing soldiers spinning and banging into each other, accompanied by a chorus of panicky screams; they looked like trees, rooted in the ground and forced to stand and take a pounding. Even after all the horses had passed, people in the street weren’t fully aware of what had just happened. Then came the mule company. Marching in orderly ranks, they too shone, their riders sitting proudly, weapons at the ready. Meanwhile, the horse company had closed up ranks and was prancing back, squeezing the raggedy ranks of people on the street between the two companies. Some of the more quick-witted soldiers tried to dart down lanes intersecting the street, but their escape routes were blocked by members of the bicycle company, men in purple civilian clothes riding Camel brand bicycles. They fired their German weapons at the feet of the thwarted escapees, throwing dust up into their faces and sending them scurrying back into the middle of the street. Before long, all the officers and men of the demolition battalion had been herded into the area in front of the Felicity Manor gate.

The mule company soldiers were ordered to dismount and move off to the side, opening up a space for the leaders to make an appearance. Demolition battalion soldiers kept their eyes riveted on the section of road, as did the hapless civilians who had been herded together with them. I had a premonition that these new arrivals would somehow be connected to the Shangguan family.

The sun had nearly disappeared below the sandy ridge, leaving only a rosy border around the dreary treetops. Golden-red crows flew rapidly back and forth above the mud huts of the outsiders, and bats put on a flying demonstration in the brilliant glow of dusk. The silence was a sign that the leaders were due any minute.

“Victory! Victory!” The mighty cry heralded the leaders’ arrival. They came from the west, riding up on camels festooned with red satin.

Sima Ku was wearing an olive drab wool uniform and, on his head at a rakish angle, a fore-and-aft cap, which we called a jackass cap. A pair of medals the size of horse hooves were pinned to his chest, his waist was circled by a silver ammunition belt, and he wore a holstered revolver on his right hip. His camel raised its head, turned its lewd lips inside out, pricked up its floppy-dog ears, and squinted its long-lashed eyes. Shaking its shod cloven hooves, twisting its snaky tail, and tightening its pared buttocks, it threaded its way through the mule company like a ship riding the waves, with Sima Ku its proud skipper. He flared his legs, in their fine leather riding boots, threw out his chest, leaned back slightly, and raised a white-gloved hand to straighten his jackass cap; his burnished face was hard beyond description, the red moles on his cheek looked like maple leaves after a frost. It was a face that seemed to have been carved out of a block of red sandalwood, then varnished with three coats of anticorrosive, moisture-proof tung oil. The horse and mule soldiers slapped the butts of their weapons and shouted in unison.

Right behind Sima Ku’s camel came another carrying his wife, Shangguan Zhaodi. She hadn’t changed much in the years since we’d last seen her; she was as fresh and beautiful, as gentle-looking as ever. A white, silky cloak was draped over her shoulders atop a lined jacket with yellow satin piping, and red silk, loose-fitting trousers. She wore tiny brown leather shoes. A deep green jade bracelet decorated each wrist, eight rings adorned her fingers. Lush green grapes hung from her earlobes – I later learned they were made of jadeite.

I mustn’t forget about my two honorable nieces. They rode up on the third camel, behind Zhaodi. Thick ropes between the humps connected two riding baskets woven from waxed boughs. The girl in the left basket, flowers in her hair, was Sima Feng; the one in the right basket, flowers also in her hair, was Sima Huang.

Next to enter my field of vision was the American, Babbitt. I couldn’t tell how old he was, but the light of life in his green, catlike eyes could only belong to a young man, a rooster barely old enough to mount a hen. He wore a dazzling feather in his cap, and though he swayed with the movements of his camel, his erect posture never varied, like a wood-carved boy tied to a float and tossed into a river. I was impressed. Mystified even. Later on, when we learned who he was, I realized that he rode a camel as if he were in the cockpit of an aircraft. He was an American Air Force pilot who had landed his Camel bomber on a main street in Northeast Gaomi at twilight.

Sima Ting brought up the rear. Even though he was a member of the glorified Sima family, he hung his head, dispirited. His camel, a dusty-looking animal, had a gimp leg.

Lu Liren pulled himself together and walked up to Sima Ku’s camel, where he snapped off an arrogant salute. “Commander Sima,” he said, “allow me to welcome you and your men as guests of our headquarters on this day of national jubilation.”

Sima laughed so hard he rocked back and forth until he was in danger of falling off. He smacked the furry hump in front of him and said to the mule troops beside him and the crowd in front and back, “Did you all hear the shit that just came out of his mouth? Headquarters? Guests? You poor country camel, this is my house, the land of my bloodline. When I was born, my mother’s blood pooled on this very street! You bunch of bedbugs have sucked dry the blood of our Northeast Gaomi Township, and now it is time for you to get the hell out of here! Go on back to your rabbit warrens and let me take my house back.”

It was an impassioned outburst, filled with a richness of sound. He emphasized every sentence by thumping the camel’s hump, and with every thump, the camel’s neck twitched and the soldiers roared. Also, with every thump, Lu Liren’s face paled just a little more. Finally, the camel, provoked beyond its limits, shrank back, bared its teeth, and sent something foul and sticky through its nose and into Lu Liren’s ashen face.

“I protest!” Lu Liren shouted in exasperation as he wiped the muck off his face. “I protest strongly! I’m going to register a complaint with the highest authority!”

“In this place,” Sima Ku said, “that highest authority is me, and I hereby announce that you and your men have half an hour to leave Dalan. If you’re still here after that, I’ll turn my weapons on you.”

“One of these days,” Lu Liren said coldly, “you’ll taste the bitter wine you’ve brewed.”

Ignoring Lu Liren, Sima Ku ordered his troops, “Escort our friends out of the area.”

The horse and mule companies closed up ranks and moved in from the east and the west. The soldiers of the demolition battalion were driven into the lane leading to our house. An armed sentry in civilian clothes stood every few meters on both sides of the lane. Others were in position on the rooftops.

A half hour later, most members of the demolition battalion were climbing soaking wet up the opposite bank of the Flood Dragon River, cold rays of moonlight shining down on their faces. The remaining troops took advantage of the confusion along the river either to escape into the nearby brush or to let the current take them far enough downriver to climb up onto the bank unobserved, wring out their clothes, and take off for home in the dark of night.

A hundred or more members of the demolition battalion stood on the opposite bank of the river like chickens dumped into the pot. As they looked around at each other, some were in tears, others were secretly pleased. After observing his disarmed and disheartened troops, Lu Liren spun around and ran back toward the river, intending to drown himself. But his troops grabbed him and wouldn’t let go. So he stood on the riverbank, deep in thought for several minutes before looking up and shouting across the river at the noisy crowd, “Sima Ku, Sima Ting, just you wait. I’ll be back one day with a vengeance! Northeast Gaomi Township belongs to us, not you! You may control it today, but someday, when all is said and done, it’ll be ours again!”

Well, let Lu Liren and his men go lick their wounds. I had my own problems to attend to. As to whether I’d drown myself in a river or down a well, eventually I chose the river, because I’d heard that rivers empty into the ocean. That year when the Bird Fairy had first displayed her powers, a dozen or more double-masted ships had sailed down the river.

I watched the demolition battalion soldiers struggling to cross the Flood Dragon River under the cold rays of moonlight. Splashing and tumbling and crawling, they stirred up the river, sending waves in all directions. Sima’s troops were not stingy with their ammunition. They fired their weapons into the river, churning the water as if it were aboil. If they’d wanted to destroy the demolition battalion, it would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. But choosing to intimidate them instead, they only killed or wounded a dozen or so men. Years later, when the demolition battalion fought its way back as an independent unit, every officer and soldier who faced a firing squad felt that the punishment did not fit the crime.

I waded slowly out toward the deep water; the surface, calm once again, reflected shards of light, thousands of them. Water grasses ensnared my feet; fish nibbled at my knees with their warm little mouths. I kept walking forward, until the water rose above my navel. I felt spasms in my gut – unbearable hunger. Then Mother’s intimate and revered, incomparably graceful breasts floated into my brain. But she had smeared hot pepper juice on her nipples, and had reminded me over and over, “You’re seven years old, time to stop nursing.” How come I’d had to live to the age of seven? Why hadn’t I died before reaching that age? Tears slid down my cheeks and into my mouth. I really ought to die, and not allow all those unclean foods to contaminate my mouth and digestive tract. Emboldened by the thought, I took several more steps forward, and the water suddenly swallowed up my shoulders; I could sense the rush of dark currents along the riverbed. I steadied my feet on the bottom to resist the powerful current. A swirling eddy drew me to it, and I was terrified. As the mud under my feet was being swept away by the rapid current of the river I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper and being pushed forward, straight into that fearful eddy. I fought to resist the force and began to scream.

Just then I heard Mother’s shouts: “Jintong – Jintong, my son, where are you…”

That was followed by a series of shouts from my sixth sister, Niandi, First Sister Laidi, and a familiar yet somehow alien thin voice; I guessed it was my second sister, the one with rings on all her fingers, Zhaodi.

I shrieked as I fell forward and was swallowed up by the eddy.

When I awoke, the first thing I saw was one of Mother’s wonderfully erect breasts, its nipple gently observing me like a loving eye. The other one was already in my mouth, taking pains to tease my tongue and rub up against my gums, a veritable stream of sweet milk filling my mouth. I smelled the heavy fragrance of Mother’s breast. I later learned that Mother had washed the pepper oil off her nipples with the rose-scented soap Second Sister, Zhaodi, had given her as an act of filial respect, and that she had also dabbed some French perfume in the cleavage between.

The room was aglow with lamplight; a dozen or more red candles had been stuck in silver candelabras on high altars. I noted that several people were seated and standing around Mother, including Sima Ku, my second brother-in-law; who was showing off his new treasure: a cigarette lighter that ignited every time he pressed the top. Young Master Sima observed his father from a distance, indifferent, no trace of intimacy.

Mother sighed. “I ought to give him back to you. The poor thing doesn’t even have a name.”

Sima Ku said, “Since my name, Ku, means a warehouse, let’s fill it with grain – Hang. We’ll call him Sima Liang.”

Mother said, “Did you hear that?” Mother said. “You are now Sima Liang.”

Sima Liang cast an indifferent glance at Sima Ku.

“Good lad,” Sima Ku said, “you remind me of myself when I was young. Mother-in-law, I thank you for protecting the life of our Sima heir. From this day on, you can look forward to enjoying life. Northeast Gaomi Township is our dominion.”

Mother responded with a noncommital shake of her head. “If you want to be truly filial,” she said to Zhaodi, “you can store up some grain for me. I don’t ever want to go hungry again.”

The following night, Sima Ku organized a great celebration in honor of the national victory in the War of Resistance and his own return to his homeland. Eight surrounding scholar trees were festooned with a cartload of firecrackers, then the men smashed two dozen pig iron woks and dug up a cache of explosives buried by the demolition battalion, with which they fashioned a device that would make a huge explosion. The firecrackers popped and cracked half the night, bringing down all the leaves and small branches from the eight scholar trees. The dazzling splinters of metal from the big device lit up half the sky. They slaughtered a dozen pigs and another dozen head of cattle, then dug up a dozen vats of vintage liquor. Filling large platters with the cooked meat, they laid them out on tables set up in the middle of the street; everyone could help themselves by using the bayonets stuck into the meat to cut off as much as they wanted; if you sliced off a pig’s ear and tossed it to one of the dogs hanging around the table, no one said a word. The vats of liquor were placed beside the tables, each with a ladle hanging on its side. Anyone wanting a drink helped himself; if you felt like taking a bath in the stuff, no one cared. That day was made for village gluttons. The eldest son of the Zhang family, Zhang Qian’er, ate and drank himself dead right there on the street. As they were carrying off his corpse, liquor and meat sprayed from his mouth and nose.