Big Breasts & Wide Hips

1

One late afternoon a couple of weeks after the demolition battalion had been driven out of town, Fifth Sister, Pandi, handed Mother a child wrapped in an old army uniform. “Mother,” she said, “take her.”

Pandi was drenched, her thin clothes sticking to her skin; I was attracted to the sight of her full, high-arching breasts. Her hair gave off the heated aroma of distiller’s mash. Datelike nipples quivered under her blouse, and I could barely keep from rushing over to bite and fondle them. I didn’t have the nerve. Always hot-tempered, Pandi lacked First Sister’s gentle nature and needed little provocation to slap your face. Maybe it would be worth it. I went over and hid from view beneath a pear tree, biting my lip and wishing I were braver.

“Stop right there!” Mother shouted at her. “Come back here!”

“Mother,” Pandi said with an angry glare, “I’m your daughter too. If you can take care of their babies, you can take care of mine.”

“Am I this family’s babysitter?” Mother replied just as angrily. “You no sooner have your babies than you hand them over to me. Not even dogs do that!”

“Mother,” Pandi said, “when the good days came around, you shared in our good fortune. Now that we’ve run into a spell of bad luck, not even our children are spared, is that it? A bowl has to be held straight so the water won’t spill.”

First Sister’s laughter emerged from the darkness and sent cold chills up my spine. “Fifth Sister,” she said icily, “you can tell that fellow Jiang I’m going to kill him one day!” “First Sister,” Pandi replied, “it’s too early to be celebrating! Not even death will clean the slate for your turncoat husband, Sha Yueliang. So don’t go off half-cocked. If you do, no one will be able to save you.”

“Stop fighting!” Mother shouted, before sitting down heavily on the ground.

A big, bright moon climbed above the ridge of our roof and shone down on the faces of the Shangguan girls, making them seem as if coated with blood. Mother shook her head sorrowfully and sobbed. “I’ve wasted my life raising a bunch of ingrates who only curse me for my efforts. Get out of my sight, all of you. I don’t ever want to see any of you again!”

Like a specter, Laidi streaked into the west wing, where she began muttering, as if Sha Yueliang were there with her. Lingdi returned from the marshes as if in a dream, a string of croaking bullfrogs in her hand; she entered the compound by climbing over the southern wall.

“You see!” Mother grumbled. “Some have gone mad, others have turned stupid. With a life like this, why go on?”

Mother laid Fifth Sister’s baby on the ground and struggled to her feet, then turned and walked toward the house without a backward glance at the bawling baby. Sima Liang was standing by the doorway watching the excitement; Mother kicked him and smacked Sha Zaohua on the head as she passed by. “Why don’t all of you just go off somewhere to die?” She slammed the door behind her. We heard the sound of things being thrown and knocked around inside. The last thing we heard was a heavy thud, as if a sack of grain had been dropped on the floor, and I guessed it must have been the sound of Mother collapsing onto the kang after her anger was spent. I couldn’t actually see her lying on the kang, but I could imagine it: arms spread wide, her swollen yet bony, chapped hands lying palms up; the left one resting against Lingdi’s two children, who might very well be mutes; the right one resting against Zhaodi’s pair of flighty and very beautiful little girls. Moonlight framed her ashen lips. Her breasts lay flattened against her ribs, thoroughly exhausted. That spot between her and the Sima girls should have been mine; but it disappeared beneath her outstretched body.

Out in the yard, the baby Pandi had wrapped in a frayed gray army uniform was bawling as it lay on the path, which had been tramped down lower than the ground beside it. No one paid her any attention. Pandi walked around her child and shouted savagely in the direction of Mother’s window, “I expect you to take good care of her. Lu Liren and I will fight our way back one day!”

Pounding the straw mat covering the kang, Mother shouted back, “You want me to take good care of her? I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll fling her into the river to feed the turtles or down a well to feed the toads or into the latrine to feed the flies!”

“Go ahead,” Pandi said. “She’s my baby, and I was yours, so she’s your flesh and blood!”

With that comment, Pandi bent down for one more look at the baby lying on the path, then turned and staggered off toward the street. As she passed the west wing, she stumbled and took a bad fall. Moaning and groaning as she got to her feet, she cupped her injured breasts and aimed a curse at the door: “You slut, just you wait!” Inside the room, Laidi laughed. Pandi spit at me before walking off, her head held high.

The next morning we awoke to find Mother training the white milk goat to feed Pandi’s baby girl as she lay in a basket.

On those spring mornings of 1946, there was a lot going on in the house of the Shangguan family. Before the sun had climbed above the mountains, a thin, nearly transparent misty glow drifted across the yard. The village was still asleep at such times, swallows dreamed in their nests, crickets in the heated ground behind stoves made their music, and cows chewed their cud alongside feeding troughs…

Mother sat up on the kang and, with a painful moan, rubbed her aching fingers. After a bit of a struggle, she draped her coat over her shoulders and tried to limber up her stiff joints in order to button up her dress. She yawned, rubbed her face, and opened her eyes wide as she swung her feet over the edge of the kang and slipped her feet into her shoes; she stepped down, wobbled a bit, and bent over to pull up the heels of her shoes, then sat down on the bench next to the kang to see if all the sleeping babies were all right before walking outside with a basin to fetch water. Filling the basin with four, maybe five, ladlefuls, she watered the goats in the pen.

Five milk goats, three black and two white, all had long, narrow faces, curved horns, and lengthy goatees. Five heads came together as they drank from the basin. Mother picked up a broom and swept the droppings into a pile and then out of the pen. She then went out into the lane for fresh dirt, which she spread over the ground. After brushing out the animals’ coats, she returned for more water to clean their nipples, which she dried with a towel. The goats baa-ed contentedly. By this time the sun was out, a mixture of red and purple rays driving away the misty glow. Returning to the room, Mother scrubbed the wok, then filled it part way with water. “Niandi,” she shouted, “time to get up.” She dumped in some millet and mung beans and let them soften for a while before adding soybeans and putting the lid on the wok. She bent over and fed the stove with straw. Whoosh, she lit a match, spreading sulfur fumes around her. Her mother-in-law, lying on a bed of straw, rolled her eyes. “You old witch, are you still alive? Isn’t it time for you to die?” Mother sighed. The bean tassels crackled in the stove, filling the air with a pleasant aroma. Popi A stray bean exploded. “Niandi, are you up?”

Sima Liang emerged bleary-eyed from the east wing, heading for the toilet. Puffs of green smoke rose from the chimney. Water buckets thudded against one another; Niandi was heading to the river for water. Baa- goats. Wah – Lu Shengli’s cries. Sima Feng and Sima Huang whimpered; the Bird Fairy’s two kids grunted -Ao-ya-ya. The Bird Fairy walked lazily out the gate. Laidi was standing at the window brushing her hair. Horses out in the lane whinnied. It was Sima Ku’s horse company riding over to the river to water their mounts. A throng of mules passed by; it was the mule company returning from the river. Wagon bells rang out; it was the bicycle company practicing their riding skills. “Come boil some water,” Mother said to Sima Liang. “Jintong, time to get up! Go down to the river and wash your face.” Mother carried five willow baskets out into the sun and filled them with five babies. “Let the goats out,” she said to Sha Zaohua. The skinny girl, her hair a mess, eyes still bleary from sleep, entered the pen, where the goats greeted her with friendly tosses of their horned heads and licked the grime off her knees. Their tongues tickled her. She thumped their heads with her tiny fists and cursed them childishly, “You stump-tailed devils.” After removing the tethers from their necks, she tapped one of them on the ear. “Go on,” she said, “you belong to Lu Shengli.” The goat wagged its tail happily and sprinted over next to Shengli, who lay in her basket, arms and legs straight up, crying urgently. The goat spread its rear legs, backed up to the basket, and pushed its udder up against Shengli’s face. Its nipples sought out Shengli; Shengli sought out the goat’s nipples. Both knew their task well, to each other’s mutual satisfaction. Each nipple was long and swollen; like a voracious barracuda, Shengli caught it in her mouth and held fast. Big Mute and Little Mute’s goats, Sima Feng and Sima Huang’s goats, each went straight to its master or mistress and, in the same manner, drew up next to the child’s mouth, each knowing its task well, to the mutual satisfaction of all. The goats bent over, eyes slitted, goatees quivering slightly.

“The water’s boiling, Granny,” Sima Liang said to Mother, who was outside washing her face. “Let it boil a while longer.” Flames lapped at the bottom of the wok on the stove that had been altered for their use by Old Zhang, the demolition battalion’s cook. Sima Liang, who was wearing only pants, was thin as a rail and had a melancholy look in his eyes. Lingdi returned with the water, the two full buckets swaying at the ends of her shoulder pole. Her braid fell all the way to her waist and was tied at the end by a fashionable plastic ribbon. The goats all switched nipples for their children. “Let’s eat,” Mother said. Sha Zaohua put the table up, Sima Liang laid out the bowls and chopsticks. Mother dished up the porridge – one two three four five six seven bowls. Zaohua and Yunü put the benches in place, while Niandi fed her grandmother. Slurp slurp. Laidi and Lingdi walked in with their own bowls and served themselves. Without looking at them, Mother muttered, “None of you is crazy when mealtime rolls around.” Her two daughters went outside to eat their porridge in the yard. “I’ve heard that the independent 16th Regiment is going to fight its way back,” Niandi said. “Eat,” Mother said. I was kneeling in front of her, suckling. “Mother, you’ve spoiled him. Are you going to breast-feed him until he gets married?” “That’s not unheard of,” Mother said. I went from one nipple to the other. “Jintong,” she said, “I’m going to keep at it until the day you’ve had enough.” Then she turned to Niandi. “After breakfast, take the goats out to pasture and bring back some wild garlic for lunch.” Mother’s orders brought the morning to an end.

Shengli waddled through the grass, her backside brushing against the feltlike greenery. Her goat was grazing, nibbling only the tender grass tips, its dew-wetted face giving it the haughty look of a young noblewoman. The times may have been chaotic and noisy, but the pasture-land was peacefully quiet. Flowers dotted the land, their redolence intoxicating. We were sprawled on the ground around Niandi. Sima Liang was chewing a stalk of grass, coating the corners of his mouth with green juice. His eyes were bright yellow, but with a murky cast. The expression on his face and the chewing motion made him look like a gigantic locust. Sha Zaohua was watching an ant perched atop a stalk of grass scratching its head as it looked for an escape route. The tip of my nose touched a patch of golden flowers; their fragrance tickled me, and I sneezed loudly, throwing a scare into Sixth Sister, Niandi, who was lying on her back. Her eyes snapped open and she gave me a nasty look, a bit of a scowl on her lips and a slight crinkle on her nose, before closing her eyes again. She looked comfortable, lying there in the sun. Her protruding brow was clear and shiny; not a wrinkle in sight. She had thick lashes and a bit of down on her upper lip; her chin turned up fetchingly. Among all the girls in the Shangguan family, only her ears were fleshy with no loss of grace. She was wearing a white poplin blouse passed down by Second Sister, Zhaodi, one of those fashionable types that button down the front with so-called Mandarin Duck fasteners. Her braid lay across her breast like an eel. Now, of course, I need to discuss her breasts. Not especially large, they were hard and not yet fully developed. So they kept their shape even when the body from which they grew was flat on its back. Their sleek, fair skin peeked out from the gaps between her buttons, and I was tempted to tickle them with a stalk of grass; I didn’t have the nerve. Niandi and I never had gotten along. She couldn’t stomach the fact that I was still breast-feeding, and if I’d tickled her breast, it would have been the same as rubbing a tiger’s ass. It was a struggle. The stalk chewer kept chewing the stalk, the ant watcher kept watching the ant; as they ate, the white goats looked like noblewomen, the black ones like widows. When there’s too much food, people don’t know where to start; when there’s too much grass, goats have the same problem. Ai-choo! So goats sneeze too, and loud! Their udders drooped heavily. It was nearly noon. I picked a stalk of bristlegrass and decided to rub the tiger’s ass after all. No one noticed me as I reached out stealthily with the stalk of grass, drawing nearer and nearer to a gap in her blouse, stretched open by her jutting breasts. My ears were buzzing, my heart thumped like a scared rabbit. The stalk of grass touched her fair skin. No reaction. Was she asleep? If so, why didn’t I hear her breathing? I twirled the end of the stalk, making the other end shake. She reached up and scratched her chest, but didn’t open her eyes. She probably thought it was an ant. I pushed the grass in farther and twisted it. She slapped her chest, caught my stalk of grass, and pulled it out. She sat up and glared at me, her face turning red. I laughed. “You little bastard!” she cursed. “Mother has spoiled you rotten!” She laid me down in the grass and swatted me on the behind – twice. “But I’m not going to!” With a fierce glare in her eyes, she added, “You’re going to hang yourself to death from a nipple one of these days!”

Frightened by the outburst, Sima Liang spat out a stalk of chewed-up grass and Zaohua stopped watching the ant. They both looked at me, clearly puzzled, then gave the same look to Niandi. I managed a feeble cry, for show, since I felt I’d gotten the better of the exchange. Niandi stood up and tossed her head proudly, whipping her braid around to the back of her head. Shengli had by then waddled up to her goat, but it was trying to get away from her. So she grabbed its nipple, and it responded unhappily by knocking her over. I couldn’t tell if the bleats that followed meant that she was crying or what. Sima Liang jumped to his feet and, with a series of loud grunts, ran as fast as he could, startling a dozen red-winged locusts and several dirt-colored little birds. Moving quickly on her skinny legs, Zaohua ran over to a patch where velvety purple flowers the size of fists poked up above the grass tips. I stood up, embarrassed, walked around behind Niandi, and started pounding her on the backside. “Hit me, will you?” I shouted with as much bluster as I could manage. “How dare you?” Her buttocks were so hard and so tight that hitting them hurt my hands. When her patience ran out, she turned, bent at the waist, and snarled – mouth open, teeth bared, eyes staring, releasing a scary, wolfish howl. It occurred to me how similar human and canine faces can be. She pushed my head backward, throwing me flat on my back in the grass.

The white goat put up a feeble struggle when Niandi grabbed it by the horns. Shengli rushed up, flopped over beneath the animal, and strained to turn her head so she could take the nipple into her mouth as she kicked the goat’s belly with both feet. Niandi rubbed the goat’s ears; it wagged its tail docilely. Mournful feelings flooded my mind. It was clear that my days of relying on mother’s milk were coming to an end. So before that happened, I would have to find a substitute. The first thing that came to mind was those long, wiggly noodles. But that thought brought me disgust. And dry heaves. Niandi looked up and gave me a skeptical look. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked in a tone that showed how repugnant she thought I was. I waved her off to show I couldn’t answer. More dry heaves. She let go of the goat. “Jintong,” she said, “what do you think you’re going to be like when you grow up?”

I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “Why don’t you try goat’s milk?” she said. The sight of Shengli greedily feeding under her goat made an impression on me. “Are you determined to be the cause of Mother’s death?” She shook me by the shoulders. “Do you know where milk comes from? That’s Mother’s blood you’re drinking. So listen to me and start drinking goat’s milk.”

I nodded reluctantly.

So she reached out and grabbed the mute’s black goat. “Come here,” she said to me as she calmed the goat down by stroking its back. “I said, come here.” Encouraged by the look of kindness, I took a tentative step toward her. Then another. “Lie down under its belly. See how she does it?”

I lay down on the grass and scooted along on my back. “Big Mute, back up a little,” she said as she pushed the black goat backward. I looked up into the dazzling blue Northeast Gaomi sky. Golden birds were flying through the silvery air, soaring on the wind currents and trailing sweet-sounding cries. But my view was quickly blocked by the goat’s udder, which hung over my face. Two large insectlike nipples quivered as they sought out my mouth. They rubbed up against my lips, and when they did, the quivering increased, as if they were trying to pry my lips open. They tickled my lips, like tiny charges of electricity, and I was immersed in a flood of what seemed like joy. I’d assumed that goats’ teats were soft, not elastic at all, sort of cottony, and that they’d lose their shape as soon as they entered my mouth. Now I knew they were actually pliable and tough, quite springy, and in no way inferior to Mother’s. As they rubbed my lips, I detected something hot and liquid. It had a muttony taste that quickly turned sweet, the flavor of buttery grass and daisies. My determination weakened, I unclenched my teeth, my lips parted, and the goat’s teat rushed into my mouth, where it vibrated excitedly and released powerful spurts of liquid, some of it hitting the sides of my mouth, the remainder squirting straight down my throat. I nearly choked. I spit out the teat, but a second, more aggressive one quickly took its place.

With a flick of its tail, the goat walked away casually. Tears gushed from my eyes. My mouth was filled with a muttony taste, and I felt like throwing up. But my mouth was also filled with the taste of buttery grass and daisies, and so I stopped feeling like throwing up. Sixth Sister pulled me to my feet and ran in a circle with me in her arms. I saw freckles pop up all over her face; her eyes were like black stones dredged up from the bottom of a river, clean and bright. “My foolish little brother,” she said excitedly, “this will be your salvation…”

“Mother,” Sixth Sister shouted, “Mother, Jintong drank goat’s milk! He drank goat’s milk!”

The sound of clapping emerged from inside.

Mother tossed the blood-stained rolling pin down next to the wok, opened her mouth wide, and gasped for breath, her chest rising and falling violently. Shangguan Lü lay beside the haystack, a crack in her skull looking like a walnut. Eighth Sister, Yunü, was huddled near the stove, a piece of her ear missing, seemingly gnawed off by a rat, and still oozing blood. The blood stained her cheek and her neck. She was bawling loudly, a steady flow of tears emerging from her sightless eyes.

“Mother, you killed Grandma!” Sixth Sister shrieked in horror.

Mother reached out and touched Grandma’s wound with her fingers, and then, as if given an electric shock, sat down hard on the ground.

2

As specially invited guests, we climbed the southeastern edge of the grassy slope on Reclining Ox Mountain to watch a demonstration by Commander Sima Ku and the young American Babbitt. A southeastern wind swept past under sunny skies as Laidi and I rode a single donkey up the mountain; Zhaodi and Sima Liang shared another one. I sat in front of Laidi, who held me from behind. Zhaodi sat in front of Sima Liang, who merely held on to her clothes, since he couldn’t wrap his arms around her belly, in which the next generation of Simas was growing. Our contingent skirted the ox’s tail and gradually climbed onto the ox’s back, where needle-sharp grass dotted with yellow dandelions grew. Even with us on their backs, the donkeys climbed effortlessly.

Sima Ku and Babbitt rode past us on horseback, excitement showing on their faces. Sima Ku waved a fist at us as he passed. At the crest of the mountain, a group of yellow-skinned people shouted down the mountain. Sima Ku raised his riding crop and smacked the rump of his horse. The horse responded by climbing even faster, with Babbitt’s horse following close behind. He rode horses the same way he rode camels, his upper body straight no matter how much he swayed from side to side. His legs were so long that his stirrups nearly touched the ground, and his horse was both to be pitied and laughed at; but it galloped along nonetheless.

“Let’s speed up a bit,” Second Sister said as she dug her heels into the donkey’s midsection. She was the head of our delegation, the esteemed wife of the commander, and no one dared disobey her. Representatives of the masses and some local celebrities followed without a word of complaint, though they were out of breath from the climb. The donkey carrying Laidi and me was right on the tail of the one carrying Zhaodi and Sima Liang; Laidi’s nipples rubbed against my back through the black cloth of her dress, which took me back to the episode in the feeding trough, and brought me great pleasure.

The wind on the mountaintop was stronger than lower down, so strong in fact that the windsock snapped loudly, its red and yellow silk ribbons dancing wildly, like a pheasant’s tail feathers. A dozen or so soldiers were unloading things from the backs of camels, scowling beasts whose tails and rear leg joints were soiled by dried excrement. The rich pastureland of Northeast Gaomi had fattened up Commander Sima’s horses and donkeys and the locals’ cows and goats, but had had the opposite effect on the dozen or so pitiful camels, who were slow to acclimate to the place; their rumps seemed chiseled by awls, their legs were like kindling; their normally tall and angular humps looked like empty sacks hanging to one side, about to fall to the ground.

The soldiers unrolled an enormous carpet and laid it on the grass. “Lift the commander’s wife down off her donkey!” Sima Ku ordered. Soldiers ran up and lifted the pregnant Zhaodi off her donkey, and then helped Sima Liang down. After that it was the commander’s sister-in-law, Laidi, his brother-in-law, Jintong, and his younger sister-in-law, Yunii. As honored guests, we sat on the carpet. Everyone else stood behind us. The Bird Fairy tried to hide in the crowd, and when Second Sister signaled her to come over, she hid her face behind Sima Ting and stood behind us. Sima Ting, who was suffering from a toothache, stood there covering his swollen cheek with his hand.

The spot where we sat corresponded to the ox’s head, the face directly in front of us. The ox made a point of sticking its mouth up against the chest. Its face was a hanging cliff well over a thousand feet above sea level. Winds swept over our heads on their way to the village, above which misty clouds floated like puffs of smoke. I tried to locate our house, but what I spotted was Sima Ku’s neatly laid-out compound, with its seven entrances. The church bell tower and the wooden watchtower appeared small and fragile. The plain, the river, the lake, and the pastureland were ringed by a dozen or more ponds and populated by a herd of horses the size of goats and donkeys as small as dogs; they were the Sima Battalion mounts. There were six milk goats the size of rabbits, and those were our goats – the big white one was mine. Mother had requested it from Second Sister, who had requested it from her husband’s aide-de-camp, who had sent someone to the Yi-Meng mountain district to buy it. A little girl stood next to my goat; her head looked like a little ball. But I knew it was a young woman, not a little girl, and that her head was actually a lot bigger than a little ball, because it was Sixth Sister, Niandi. She had taken the goats out to pasture, not for their benefit, but because she wanted to see the demonstration too.

Sima Ku and Babbitt had dismounted; their squat horses were roaming around the ox’s head, searching for wild alfalfa, with its purple flowers. Babbitt walked up to the ledge and leaned over to look down, as if gauging its height. Then he looked up into the sky – nothing but blue as far as the eye could see, so no problem there. He squinted and raised a hand, apparently checking the force of the wind, even though the flag was snapping, our clothes billowed, and a hawk was being tossed around in the air like a dead leaf. Sima Ku was behind him, exaggeratedly repeating all his moves. He had the same serious look on his face, but I sensed it was all for show.

‘Okay,” Babbitt said stiffly, “we can begin.”

“Okay,” Sima Ku said in the same tone. “We can begin.”

The soldiers brought up two bundles and opened one of them. Inside was a sheet of white silk that seemed bigger than the sky itself; attached to it were some white cords. Babbitt signaled the soldiers to tie the cords around Sima Ku’s hips and chest. Once that was done, he tugged at them to make sure they were well fastened. He then shook out the white silk and had the soldiers stretch it out as far as it would go. As a gust of wind caught it, the soldiers let go, and it billowed out into a sweeping arc, pulling all the cords taut and dragging Sima Ku along the ground. He tried to stand, but couldn’t, and began rolling along the ground like a newborn donkey. Babbitt ran up behind him and grabbed the cord around his back. “Grab it,” he shouted stiffly, “grab the control cord.” Sima Ku, apparently coming to his senses, cursed, “Babbitt, you fucking assassin -”

Second Sister jumped up from the carpet and ran after Sima Ku. But she hadn’t gone more than a few steps before he was swept over the ledge, bringing an abrupt end to his curses. Babbitt roared, “Pull the cord on your left! Pull it, stupid!”

We ran over to the ledge, even Eighth Sister, who stumbled in the general direction until First Sister grabbed her. The sheet of silk by then had been transformed into a puffy white cloud, drifting along at an angle, with Sima Ku hanging beneath it, twisting and turning like a fish on a hook.

Babbitt roared, “Steady, stupid, steady! Get yourself ready to touch down!”

The cloud drifted along with the wind, descending slowly until it came to earth on a distant grassy spot, where it was transformed into a dazzling white cover over the green grass.

All that time, we stood on the edge holding our breath, mouths open, as we followed the white sheet with our eyes until it touched the ground; then we closed our mouths and recommenced breathing. But we quickly tensed up as we became aware that Second Sister was crying. It suddenly occurred to me that the commander had fallen to his death. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the patch of white, waiting for a miracle. Which is what we got: the sheet stirred and began to rise; a black object squirmed out from under it and stood up. He waved his arms; his excited shouts reached us on the mountaintop. A roar went up from the ledge.

Babbitt’s face was bright red; the tip of his nose shone, as if smeared with oil. After tying his cords around him and strapping the bundle onto his back, he stood, limbered up his arms, and walked slowly backward. We couldn’t take our eyes off him, but he was oblivious to his surroundings, eyes straight ahead. After he’d backed up a dozen yards or more, he stopped and closed his eyes; his lips were moving, as if he were uttering a charm. The charm completed, he opened his eyes and took off running. When he reached the spot where we were standing, he dove into the air, body straight, and began falling like a stone. For a moment, I was caught up in the illusion that he wasn’t falling, but that the ledge was actually rising, along with the ground below. Then, all of a sudden, a pure white flower, the largest I’d ever seen, blossomed in the blue sky over the green grass. A roar greeted this big white flower as it drifted along, with Babbitt hanging steadily beneath it, like the weight on a scale. He hit the ground in a matter of seconds, right in the middle of our little herd of goats, which fled in all directions, like frightened rabbits. Suddenly, the big white flower collapsed in on itself, like a bubble, covering Babbitt and the shepherdess Niandi.

Sixth Sister shrieked in alarm as a layer of white closed in around her. When her goats fled in all directions, she gazed up into the pink face of Babbitt, as he hung beneath the white cloud. He was smiling. A god descending to the land of mortals! Or so she thought. As if in a trance, she watched him fall rapidly toward her, her heart filling with reverence and ardent love for him.

The rest of us stuck our heads out over the ledge to see what was going on down below. “This has sure been an eye-opener,” said Huang Tianfu, who ran the coffin shop. “A god. I’ve lived seventy years, and I’ve finally seen a god descend to the land of mortals.” Mr. Qin the Second, who taught at the local school, stroked his goatee and sighed. “There was something special about Commander Sima the day he was born. When he was my student, I knew he was headed for big things.” Mr. Qin and Proprietor Huang were surrounded by township elders, all of whom were praising Sima Ku in similar language but different tones of voice and marveling over the eye-popping miracle that had just occurred. “You folks cannot imagine how many ways he differed from the others,” Mr. Qin said loudly to drown out the discussion around him and make a show of his special relationship with Sima Ku, a man who could fly like a bird.

A shrill noise sliced through the air from somewhere beyond the crowd; it sounded a bit like a little whelp crying for the nipple, but even more like the cries of gulls circling boats on the river, which we’d heard many years earlier. Mr. Qin the Second’s laughter stopped abruptly; the look of mirthful pride on his face vanished. We all turned to see where that strange noise had come from. It had, we discovered, come from Third Sister, Lingdi. But little of what made her “Third Sister” remained; when she uttered the strange, shrill noise that sent chills up our spines, she’d transformed almost completely into the Bird Fairy: her nose had hooked into a beak, her eyes had turned yellow, her neck had retreated into her torso, her hair had changed into feathers, and her arms were now wings, which she flapped up and down as she climbed the increasingly steep hillside, shrieking as if alone in the world and heading straight for the precipice. Sima Ting reached out to stop her, but failed, coming away with only a torn piece of cloth. By the time we snapped out of our bewilderment, she was already soaring through the air below the precipice – I prefer the word soaring to plunging. A thin green mist rose from the grass below.

Second Sister was the first to cry. The sound was disturbing. It was perfectly natural for the Bird Fairy to fly off a precipice, so what was she crying about? But then, First Sister, whom I’d always considered sneaky and cynical, began to cry. Inexplicably, even Eighth Sister, who couldn’t see a thing, joined in. Her cries sounded a bit as if she were talking in her sleep and were filled with the passion of someone seeking permission to vent her emotions. One day, long after the event, Eighth Sister confided in me that the crunch of Third Sister hitting the ground sounded to her like the shattering of glass.

The excited crowd was stupefied, faces frosted, eyes glazed. Second Sister signaled a soldier to bring over a mule, which she mounted by grabbing the animal’s short neck and swinging up onto its back. She dug her heels into the mule’s belly, sending it into an uneasy trot. Sima Liang ran after the mule, but was stopped by a soldier before he’d taken more than a couple of steps. The soldier swept him up in his arms and sat him on the horse his father, Sima Ku, had just ridden up on.

Like a routed army, we headed down Reclining Ox Mountain. What were Babbitt and Niandi doing under the white cloud at that moment? As I rode my mule down the mountain path, I racked my brain trying to conjure up an image of Niandi and Babbitt inside the parachute. What I think I saw was: He was kneeling beside her, holding a stalk of bristlegrass in his hand and brushing the velvety tassel against her breasts, just as I had done not long before. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed, whimpering contentedly, like a dog when you rub its belly. See there, its legs rise into the air, its tail swishes back and forth on the ground. She’s doing whatever it takes to please Babbitt! Not long before, she had nearly turned my backside raw because I’d tickled her with a stalk of grass. That thought angered me, and yet there was more to it than just anger. An erotic feeling was there as well, like flames licking at my heart. “Bitch!” I cursed, sticking my hands inside, as if to choke her. Laidi twisted around. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Babbitt,” I muttered, “Babbitt, the American demon Babbitt has covered up Sixth Sister.”

By the time we’d made our slow, winding way down the mountain, Sima Ku and Babbitt had freed themselves from their cords and were standing there, heads bowed, the ground in front of them covered by lush green grass; Third Sister lay heavily in the muddy ground, face-up. Splashes of mud and clods of uprooted grass dotted the area around her. The avian expression had left her face without a trace. Her eyes were open slightly; a sense of tranquillity had settled onto her still smiling face. Cold glints of light emerging from her eyes pierced my chest and went straight to my heart. Her face was ashen, her lips appeared covered with chalk. Threads of blood had seeped from her nostrils, her ears, and the corners of her eyes, and several alarmed red ants were darting across her face.

Second Sister limped over as fast as she could, fell to her knees beside Third Sister’s body, and shrieked, “Third Sister, Third Sister, Third Sister…” She reached under her neck, as if to help her up. But the neck was as soft and pliable as a rubber band, and she merely stretched it out. The head lay in the crook of Second Sister’s arm, like a dead goose. Second Sister quickly laid Third Sister’s head back down on the ground and picked up her hand. It too was as soft and pliable as rubber. Second Sister cried and cried. “Third Sister, oh, Third Sister, why have you left us…”

First Sister neither cried nor shouted. She merely knelt beside Third Sister and looked up at the people standing around them. Her eyes were unfocused, her gaze narrow, shallow, diffuse. I heard her sigh and watched as she reached back and plucked a velvety pompon, a stately, gentle purple flower with which she wiped off the blood that had seeped out of Third Sister’s nostrils, then her eyes, and finally her ears. Once she’d cleaned up the blood, she brought the purple flower up to her nose and sniffed it, every inch of it, and as she did so, I saw a strange smile spread across her face and a light in her eyes that belonged to a person in a certain realm of intoxication. I had the vague feeling that the Bird Fairy’s transcendent, otherworldly spirit was being transferred to the body of Laidi by way of that purple velvety pompon of a flower.

Sixth Sister, who concerned me the most, elbowed her way through the crowd of onlookers and walked slowly up to Third Sister’s body. She neither knelt nor cried. She just stood quietly, fidgeting with the tip of her braid, her head bowed, blushing one minute, ashen-faced the next, like a misbehaving little girl. But she already had the carriage and figure of a young woman; her hair was black and glossy, her buttocks rose up behind her, almost as if a bushy red tail were hidden there. She was wearing a white silk hand-me-down cheongsam from Second Sister, Zhaodi. With high slits on the sides, her long legs showed through. She was barefoot, and there were red scratches on her calves from the sharp-edged leaves of couch grass. The back of her cheongsam was soiled by crushed grass and wildflowers – spots of red here and there amid bright green stains… my thoughts leaped across and squirmed beneath the white cloud that had so gently covered her and Babbitt, bristlegrass… bushy tail… my eyes were like bloodsucking leeches, fastened to her chest. Niandi’s high arching breasts, nipples like cherries, were magnified by the silk of her cheongsam. My mouth filled with sour saliva. From that moment on, whenever I saw a pair of beautiful breasts, my mouth would fill with saliva; I yearned to hold them, suck on them, I yearned to kneel before all the lovely breasts of the world, offer myself as their most faithful son… there where they jutted out, the white silk was marked by a stain, like dog slobber, and my heart ached, as if I'd been an eyewitness to the tableau of Babbitt biting my sixth sister’s nipples. The blue-eyed whelp had gazed up at her chin, while she had stroked the golden hair of his head with the same hands that had so viciously attacked my backside, and all I'd done was gently tickle her, while he had actually bit her. This wicked pain deadened my reaction to Third Sister’s death. But then, Second Sister’s weeping unsettled me, while Eighth Sister’s crying was the sound of nature, which called to mind the cherished memory of Third Sister’s magnificence and her lofty actions that could make trees bend and leaves fall, that could cause the earth to tremble and the heavens to quake, and could incite ghosts to cry and demons to wail.

Babbitt took several steps forward, bringing into focus his reddened lips, so tender and soft, and his red face, which was overlain with white fuzz. He had white lashes, a big nose, and a long neck. Everything about him disgusted me. He spread out his arms. “What a shame,” he remarked, “a terrible shame. Who could have imagined it…” All this he said in a peculiar foreign language that none of us understood, followed by some remarks in Chinese, which we did understand: “She was delusional, thinking she was a bird…”

The bystanders began talking among themselves, most likely about the relationship between the Bird Fairy and Birdman Han, possibly bringing Speechless Sun into the conversation, maybe even the two children. But I wasn’t interested, and could not have heard what they were saying anyway, since there was a buzzing in my ear, coming from a hornets’ nest on the cliff. Beneath the nest, a raccoon sat on its haunches in front of a marmot, a round, fleshy animal with tiny eyes set close together. Guo Fuzi, the village sorcerer, who was adept at planchette writing and catching ghosts, also had tiny, shifty eyes set close on either side of the bridge of his nose, and had earned the nickname “Marmot.” He stepped out from the crowd and said, “Elder uncle, she’s dead, and no amount of crying will bring her back to life. It’s a hot day, so take her home, give her a funeral, and put her to rest in the ground.” I didn’t know what apron strings he relied upon to call Sima Ku “elder uncle,” nor did I know who might be able to tell me. But Sima Ku nodded and wrung his hands. “Shit,” he said, “what a terrible turn of events!”

Marmot stood behind my second sister, his tiny eyes shifting back and forth. “Elder aunt,” he said, “she’s dead, and it’s the living who count. If you keep crying like that, now that you’re with child, a real tragedy could result. Besides, was our aunty here a real person? When all is said and done, she wasn’t, she was a fairy among birds that had been sent down to the land of mortals as punishment for pecking at the Western Mother’s immortality peaches. Now that her allotted time is up, naturally she has returned to the fairyland where she belongs. You saw with your own eyes how she looked as she floated down from the precipice, as if drunk, as if falling asleep amid heaven and earth, floating so gently. If she were human, she could not have fallen with such ease and grace…” As Marmot spoke of heaven and earth, he tried to pull Second Sister to her feet. “Third Sister,” she kept saying, “such a terrible death…”

“All right,” Sima Ku said, with an impatient wave of his hand, “that’s enough. Stop crying. For someone like her, life was a punishment. Death has brought her immortality.”

“It’s your fault,” Second Sister complained. “You and your flyboy experiment!”

“I flew, didn’t I?” Sima Ku said. “You women don’t understand such momentous events. Staff Officer Ma, have some men carry her back home, then buy a coffin and take care of the funeral arrangements. Adjutant Liu, take the parachutes back up the mountain. Adviser Babbitt and I are going to fly again.”

Marmot pulled Second Sister to her feet and said to the crowd, “Come, you people, lend a hand.”

First Sister was still kneeling on the ground, sniffing her flower, the one stained with Third Sister’s blood. Marmot said to her, “Elder aunt, there’s no need to be so sad. She has returned to her fairyland, and that should make everyone happy…”

The words were barely out of his mouth when First Sister looked up, smiled mysteriously, and stared at Marmot. He muttered something, but did not have the nerve to say more. He hastily mixed with the crowd.

Laidi held up her purple floral pompon and got to her feet, a smile on her face. She stepped over the Bird Fairy’s corpse, stared at Babbitt, and shifted her body under her loose black robe. Her movements were jumpy, like someone with a full bladder. She took a few mincing steps, threw away her floral pompon, and flung herself at Babbitt, wrapping her arms around his neck and flattening her body against his. “Lust,” she muttered, as if feverish, “suffering…”

Babbitt had to struggle to break free of her grip. With sweat coating his face, he said, mixing foreign words with local, “Please, don’t… it’s not you I love…”

Like a red-eyed dog, First Sister spewed every vile comment she knew, then flung herself at Babbitt again. He awkwardly avoided the assault – once, twice, three times – eventually screening himself behind Sixth Sister. Unhappy at being his protection, she began spinning, like a dog trying to shake off a bell tied to its tail. First Sister spun right along with her, while Babbitt, bent at the waist, fought to keep Sixth Sister between him and the attacker. They spun so much it made me dizzy, and a kaleidoscope of images whirled in front of my eyes: arching hips, chests on the attack, the glossy backs of heads, sweaty faces, clumsy legs… My head swam, my heart was a tangle of emotions. First Sister’s screams, Sixth Sister’s shouts, Babbitt’s heavy breathing, and the onlookers’ ambiguous looks. Oily smiles decorated the soldiers’ faces as their lips parted and their chins quivered. The goats, their full udders nearly touching the ground, headed home in a lazy column, my goat leading the way. The shiny coats of the horses and mules. Birds shrieked as they circled above, which must have meant that their eggs or hatchlings were hidden in the nearby grass. That poor, w^rretched grass. Flower stems broken by careless feet. A season of debauchery. Second Sister finally managed to grab a handful of First Sister’s black robe. First Sister reached out to Babbitt with both hands. The filthy language pouring from her mouth made people blush. Her robe ripped at the seams, laying bare her shoulder and part of her back. Second Sister jumped up and slapped First Sister, who stopped struggling immediately; foamy drool had gathered at the corners of her mouth, her eyes were glazed. Second Sister slapped her over and over, harder and harder. Dark trickles of blood snaked out of her nostrils and her head slumped against her chest like a drooping sunflower, just before she fell headfirst to the ground.

Exhausted, Second Sister sat down in the grass, gasping for air. Her gasps soon turned to sobs. She pounded her own knees with her fists, as if setting up a rhythm for her sobs.

Sima Ku could not hide the look of excitement on his face. His eyes were fixed on First Sister’s exposed back. Coarse, heavy breathing. He kept rubbing his trousers with his hands, as if they were stained by something that would never rub off.

3

The wedding banquet got underway in the newly whitewashed church at dusk. A dozen or more brilliant light bulbs hanging from the rafters turned the hall brighter than daytime. A machine in the tiny courtyard chugged noisily, sending mysterious currents of electricity through wires and into the bulbs, which emitted a strong light to drive out the darkness and attract moths, which were scalded to death the second they touched one of the bulbs and fell onto the heads of the Sima Battalion officers and gentry representatives from Dalan. Sima Ku was wearing his uniform; his face was radiant as he rose to his feet at the head table and cleared his throat. “For all you members of the militia and the local gentry,” he said, “today’s banquet is being held to celebrate the marriage of our esteemed friend Babbitt and my young sister-in-law Niandi. Such a joyous event deserves a heartfelt round of applause.” Everyone clapped enthusiastically. Sitting in the seat next to Sima Ku, dressed in a white uniform, with a red flower stuck in his shirt pocket, was the beaming guest of honor himself, the young American. His blond hair, slicked down with peanut oil, was as glossy as if it had just been licked clean by dogs. Niandi, who sat in the chair beside him, was wearing a white gown, open at the neck to reveal the top half of her breasts. I nearly drooled. During the wedding ceremony earlier that day, Sima Liang and I had walked down the aisle behind her, carrying the long train of her gown, like the tail of a pheasant. She wore two heavy Chinese roses in her hair; a look of smug contentment showed on her heavily powdered face. Lucky Niandi, how shameless you were. The Bird Fairy’s bones weren’t even cold before you walked down the aisle with the American!

Sima Ku held out a glass that glowed red from the wine inside. “Mr. Babbitt came to us out of the sky; the heavens brought us our Babbitt. You all personally witnessed his flying demonstration, and he also rigged the electric lamps that shine above us.” He stopped and pointed to the rafters. “That, folks, is electricity, stolen from the God of Thunder. From the moment Babbitt entered our midst, our guerrilla forces have enjoyed smooth sailing. Babbitt is our Good Fortune General, come to us with a bellyful of brilliant strategies. In a few moments, he’ll reveal something truly eye-opening for us all.” He turned and pointed to a white sheet covering the wall behind the podium from which Pastor Malory had once preached and which had later served Miss Tang of the demolition battalion when she spoke out for resistance against the Japanese. A veil of darkness shrouded my eyes – the electric lights were blinding me. “Now that the war has been won, Mr. Babbitt has said he wants to go home. To make sure that doesn’t happen, we must do whatever it takes to keep him here, show him what is in our hearts. And that is why I’ve taken it upon myself to give him the hand of my young sister-in-law, more beautiful than the angels in Heaven, in marriage. Now a toast to the happiness of Mr. Babbitt and Miss Shangguan Niandi. Bottoms up!”

The guests got noisily to their feet, clinked glasses and – “Bottoms” – tipped back their heads – “Up!”

Niandi held out her glass, displaying the gold wedding ring on her finger, and clinked it against Babbitt’s glass; then she clinked glasses with Sima Ku and Zhaodi. Unhealthy red spots showed on the pale cheeks of Zhaodi, who hadn’t fully regained her strength following childbirth. “It’s time for the bride and groom to drink up,” Sima Ku said. “Link your arms, you two.” Under his guidance, Babbitt and Niandi hooked arms and awkwardly drank the wine in their glasses, to the uproarious delight of the guests, who quickly toasted the newly-weds, before sitting down and entering the fray with their chopsticks; dozens of mouths chewing at the same time produced an irritating cacophony from greasy lips and sweaty cheeks.

Seated at our table, in addition to me, Sima Liang, Sha Zaohua, and Eighth Sister, were a bunch of little brats I didn’t know. I watched them eat. Zaohua was the first to throw down her chopsticks and use her hands. With a drumstick in her left hand and a pig’s foot in her right, she attacked them both, first one and then the other. In order to conserve energy, the children kept their eyes shut as they gnawed and chewed, taking a page out of Eighth Sister’s book. Her cheeks looked to be on fire, her lips were like scarlet clouds; she was more beautiful than the bride. Once the children started grabbing food off the platters, their eyes snapped open; I was saddened by the sight of them tearing apart the corpses of dead animals.

Mother was opposed to Sixth Sister’s marriage to Babbitt, but Sixth Sister said, “Mother, I’ve never told anyone that you killed Grandma.” That silenced Mother, who looked like a withered autumn leaf, and she washed her hands of the wedding plans. The banquet proceeded along predictable lines: conversations between and among tables ended as drinking games got underway. The supply of liquor seemed unending, dishes streamed from the kitchen, with white-uniformed waiters trotting up to the tables, arms lined with platters of food. “Make room – here come braised meatballs – Make room – here come grilled capons – Make room – stewed chicken and mushrooms -”

The guests at our table were all “clean-plate generals.” Make room – glazed pork loin – a glistening pork loin barely landed in the center of our table before several greasy hands reached out for it. Hot! They sucked in their breath like poisonous snakes. But that could not stay their hands, which reached back out and tore off chunks of meat; if the meat fell to the table, they picked it up and crammed it into their mouths. No stopping now. Stretching their necks, they swallowed – mouths open, frowning, teardrops squeezed out of the corners of their eyes. In no time, the platter was empty of skin and meat, nothing but silvery white bones. Then even they were snatched off the platter – time to gnaw at joints and tendons. Green lights emerged from the eyes of those who came away empty-handed and were forced to lick their fingers. Bellies swelled like little leather balls, skinny legs hung pitifully beneath the benches. Green bubbles rose from stomachs that made purring sounds. Make room – sweet-and-sour fish. A big-bellied, stumpy waiter with sagging jowls and flabby cheeks, dressed in white tails, came out carrying a large wooden tray with a white ceramic platter on which lay a huge, seared yellow fish. He was followed by a dozen other waiters, each taller than the one before and all dressed in white tails, carrying identical wooden trays with identical white ceramic platters on which lay similar huge, seared yellow fish. The last one out looked like a utility pole. He placed the tray in the center of our table and made a face at me. He looked familiar somehow. He had a crooked mouth, one of his eyes was closed, and his nose was creased with wrinkles. Fd seen that face somewhere, but where? Had it been at the wedding of Pandi and Lu Liren of the demolition battalion?

The side of the sweet-and-sour fish was scored with a knife from head to tail, the gaps filled with sour orange-colored syrup. One opaque eye was hidden beneath a bed of emerald green onions; its triangular tail hung miserably off the edge of the platter, as if still flapping slightly. Greasy little claws reached out in tentative probes, and since I did not have the heart to watch the fish disfigured, I looked away. Over at the head table, Babbitt and Niandi stood up, each holding a tall-stemmed glass of wine, their free arms linked. With a sort of feminine grace, they approached our table, where all eyes but mine were fixed on the disfigured corpse of the poor fish, the top half of which had been reduced to a bluish backbone. One little claw grabbed the backbone and gave it a shake, freeing the bottom half of its edible portions. Shapeless, steaming piles of fish lay on every other plate at the table. Like young wild beasts, the children dragged their kill to their dens to feast in leisure. Now only a bulging fish head, a handsome, slender tail, and the backbone that connected them remained. The white tablecloth was a mess, everywhere but in front of me, a spot of purity amid the litter, in the center of which stood a glass filled with red wine.

“Bottoms up, my dear little friends,” Babbitt said genially, holding out his glass.

His wife also held out her glass; some of her fingers were bent, others were straight, like an orchid, a gold ring gleaming in the center. A cold white glare rose from the exposed upper half of her breasts. My heart was pounding.

My tablemates clambered to their feet, mouths crammed full of fish, their cheeks, the tips of their noses, even their foreheads, glistening with oil. Sima Liang, who was next to me, wolfed down his mouthful of fish and picked up a corner of the tablecloth to wipe his hands and mouth. I had smooth, fair hands, my outfit was spotless, and my hair had a glossy sheen. My digestive system had never been called on to process the corpse of a living animal, my teeth had never been told to chew the fibers of any vegetation. A line of oily claws held out their glasses harum-scarum and clinked them against those held by the newlyweds. I was the sole exception; I stood in a daze, staring at Niandi’s breasts, gripping the edge of the table with both hands to keep from rushing over and suckling at the breast of my sixth sister.

A look of astonishment filled Babbitt’s eyes. “Why aren’t you eating or drinking?” he asked. “Haven’t you eaten a thing? Not a bite?”

Niandi came briefly down off her cloud and regained some of what had made her my sixth sister. She rubbed the back of my neck with her free hand and said to her new husband, “My brother’s the next thing to an immortal. He doesn’t eat the food of common mortals.”

The redolence emerging from her body threw my heart into a frenzy. In rebellion against my wishes, my hands reached out and grabbed her breasts. Her silk dress was slippery smooth. She yelped in alarm and flung her wine into my face. Her face was scarlet, and as she straightened the twisted bodice of her dress, she cursed: “Little bastard!”

The red wine slipped down my face, a nearly transparent red curtain lowering over my eyes. Niandi’s breasts were like red balloons that crashed together noisily in my head.

Babbitt patted my head with one of his big hands. “Your mother’s breasts belong to you, youngster,” he said with a wink. “But your sister’s breasts belong to me. I hope we become friends one day.”

I drew back and glared hatefully at his comical, ugly face. The agony I felt at that moment was beyond words. Tonight, Sixth Sister’s breasts, so glossy, so soft, so sleek, as if carved from jade, peerless treasures, would fall into the hands of that fair-skinned, down-covered American, to grab or stroke or knead at will. Sixth Sister’s milky white breasts, filled with honey, a gastronomical treat unrivaled anywhere, land or sea, would be taken into the mouth of that ivory-toothed American, to bite or nibble or suck dry until only fair skin remained. But what incensed me was the fact that this is what Sixth Sister wanted. Niandi, you slapped me just for tickling you with a grassy tassel, and you flung wine in my face when I barely touched you. But you’ll happily tolerate it when he strokes or bites you. It isn’t fair. You bunch of sluts, why can’t you understand the pain in my heart? No person on earth understands, loves, or knows how to protect breasts the way I do. And you all treat me like a jackass. I cried bitter tears.

Babbitt made a face and shrugged his shoulders. Then he took Niandi by the arm and headed over to toast the other tables. A waiter came up with a tureen of soup with egg drops and something that resembled dead man’s hair floating on the top. My tablemates took their cue from the next table by scooping up the soup, the thicker the better, with white spoons, blowing on it to cool it a bit before sipping. At our table, the soup sprayed and splashed everywhere. Sima Liang poked me. “Try some, Little Uncle,” he said. “It’s good, at least as good as goat’s milk.” “No,” I said. “None for me.” “Then sit down. Everybody’s looking at you.” I looked around. No one was looking at me.

Steam rose from the center of every table, curling up near the electric lamps, where it turned to mist before dissipating. The tables were a jumble of plates and glasses, the guests’ faces blurred, and the air inside the church stifling with the smell of alcohol. Babbitt and his wife were back at their own table. I watched as Niandi leaned over to Zhaodi and whispered something. What did she say? Was it about me? When Zhaodi nodded, Niandi leaned back, picked up a spoon and dipped it into the soup, then put it up to her mouth, wetted her lips, and drank it elegantly. Niandi had known Babbitt little more than a month, but she was already a different person. A month earlier, she’d been a common porridge-slurper. A month earlier, she’d been as noisy as anyone when she spat or blew her nose on the ground. I’d found her disgusting; but I’d admired her too. How could anyone change so quickly? Waiters came out carrying the main courses: there were boiled dumplings and some of those wormlike noodles that had ruined my appetite. There were also some colorful pastries. I can’t bring myself to describe how the people looked when they ate. I was upset and I was hungry; Mother and my goat must have been waiting anxiously. So why didn’t I get up and leave? Because after Sima Ku’s proclamation, and after the meal, Babbitt was going to demonstrate once again the material and cultural superiority of the West. I knew he was going to show a moving picture, which, according to what I’d heard, was a series of live images projected on a screen by electricity.

Finally, the banquet ended, and the waiters came out with bushel baskets, spread out, and swept the tables clean of glasses and dishes, dumping it all noisily into the baskets. What went into the baskets was perfectly usable dinnerware; what they carried away were shards of glass and pieces of ceramic. A dozen or so crack troops ran in to lend a hand, each grabbing a tablecloth, folding it up, and running off with it. Then the waiters returned to spread out fresh tablecloths, on top of which they laid out grapes and cucumbers, watermelons and pears from Hebei; there was also something called Brazilian coffee, which was the color of sweet potatoes and gave off a strange odor – one pot after another, more than I could count. Then one cup after another, also more than I could count. The guests, still belching from all the food, came out to sit down again and take some tentative sips of the Brazilian coffee, as if it were some sort of Chinese medicine.

The soldiers carried in a rectangular table on which they placed a machine that was covered by a piece of red cloth.

Sima Ku clapped his hands and announced loudly, “The movie will begin in a few minutes. Let’s welcome Mr. Babbitt, who will show us something special.”

Babbitt stood up amid thunderous applause and bowed to the crowd. He then walked up to the table and removed the red cloth to reveal a mysterious, demonic machine. His fingers moved skillfully amid a bunch of wheels, big and small, until a rumbling noise emerged from the bowels of the machine. A beam of light knifed through the air and landed on the west wall of the church. It was met by a roar of approval, which was followed by the noise of stools being dragged across the floor. People turned to follow the light. At first it landed on the carved face of Jesus on the jujube cross that had recently been dug up and re-nailed to the wall. The features of the holy icon were unrecognizable. A yellow medicinal pore fungus called lingzhi now grew where the eyes had once been. As a devout Christian, Babbitt had insisted that the wedding take place in the church. During the day, the Lord had watched over the marriage rites for him and Niandi with pore-fungus eyes; now when night had fallen, he illuminated the Lord’s eyes with an electric light, covering the pore fungus with a white mist. The beam of light began to descend, from Jesus’ face to His chest, and from there to His abdomen, to His lower parts, which the Chinese woodcarver had covered with a lotus leaf, and down to the tips of His toes. Finally, the beam settled on a rectangular sheet of white cloth with wide black borders that hung on the gray wall. It was adjusted until it fit within the black borders, then shifted a bit more before holding steady. At that moment I heard the machine make a sound like rainwater cascading down from eaves.

“Turn off the lamps!” Babbitt shouted.

With a pop, the lamps hanging from the rafters went out, and we were thrown into darkness. But the beam of light from Babbitt’s demonic machine intensified. Clusters of little white insects danced in the air and a white moth flitted erratically in the center of the beam, its shape suddenly magnified several times its original size against the white sheet. I heard cries of delight from the crowd; even I gasped. And there, in front of my eyes, were the electric images. Suddenly, a head appeared in the shaft of light. It belonged to Sima Ku. The light shone through his earlobes, in which the flow of blood was visible to us all. His head moved as he turned to face the spot where the light was coming from. His face flattened out and turned white as a sheet of paper, while blocking out a big section of the screen. Loud cries emerged from the darkness.

“Sit down!” Babbitt shouted irately, as a delicate white hand was thrust into the beam of light. Sima Ku’s head sank beneath the light. The wall made a series of popping sounds, as dark specks flickered on the screen – the sight and sound of gunshots. Music then burst from a sound box hanging next to the screen. It sounded a little like a string instrument, the huqin, and a little like a wind instrument, the suona, but not exactly like either. It was thin and tinny, like mung bean noodles being squeezed through the holes of a sieve.

Some white, squiggly words appeared on the screen, several lines of them, some big and some small, rising from the bottom. More shouts from the crowd. Water, it’s said, always flows downward, but these foreign words flowed in the opposite direction, disappearing into the blackness of the wall when they reached the top of the screen. A crazy thought popped into my head: Would they be found embedded in the church wall tomorrow morning? Water then appeared on the screen, flowing down a riverbed bordered by trees, noisy birds hopping around on the branches. Our mouths fell open in amazement; we forgot to shout. The next scene was of a man with a rifle slung over his back, his open-front shirt revealing a hairy chest. A cigarette dangled from his lips, smoke curling upward from the tip and streaming out from his nostrils. My god, what a sight! A black bear lumbered out from a stand of trees and went straight for the man. Shrieks from women and the sound of a pistol being cocked erupted in the church. The silhouette of a man burst into the beam of light. Sima Ku again. Revolver in hand. He had intended to shoot the bear, but its image on the screen behind him was shattered.

“Sit down, you damned fool!” Babbitt shouted. “Sit down! It’s a movie!”

Sima Ku sat back down, but by then the bear already lay dead on the screen, a stream of green blood seeping from its chest. The hunter was sitting on the ground beside it, reloading.

“Son of a bitch!” Sima Ku shouted. “What a marksman!”

The man on the screen looked up, muttered something I couldn’t understand, and then smiled contemptuously. Slinging his rifle over his back again, he stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle, which echoed in the church. A horse-drawn wagon rumbled up along the riverbank. The horse had a proud, defiant look, but in a sort of stupid way. Its harness looked familiar, as if I’d seen it somewhere. A woman stood in the wagon behind the shaft, her long hair tossing in the wind; I couldn’t tell what color it was. She had a big face, a jutting forehead, gorgeous eyes, and curled lashes as black and bristly as a cat’s whiskers. Her mouth was enormous, her lips black and shiny. She looked immoral to me. Her breasts bounced and jiggled like crazy, like a pair of white rabbits caught by the tail. They were much bigger and fuller than any in the Shangguan family. She drove the wagon straight toward me at a gallop; my heart lurched, my lips tingled, my palms were sweaty. I jumped to my feet, but was pushed back down on the bench by a powerful hand on my head. I turned to look. The man’s mouth was wide open; I didn’t recognize him. The area behind him was packed with people, some even blocking the door. Others seemed to be hanging on the doorframe. Out in the street, people clamored to squeeze in.

The woman reined the horse in and jumped down off the wagon. She picked up the hem of her dress, exposing her milky white legs, and shouted, to the man, that I could tell. Then she took off running, still shouting. Sure enough, she was shouting at him. Ignoring the dead bear, he took his rifle off his back, threw it to the ground, and ran toward the woman. Her face, her eyes, her mouth, her white teeth, her heaving breasts. Then the face of the man, bushy eyebrows, eyes like a hawk, a glistening beard, and a shiny scar that separated his brow from his temple. Back to the woman’s face. Then back to the man’s. The woman’s feet as she flicked off her shoes. The man’s clumsy feet. The woman ran into the man’s arms. Her breasts were flattened. She attacked the man’s face with her large mouth. His mouth clamped over hers. Then, your mouth is outside, mine is inside. Two mouths coupling. Moans and chirps, all from the woman. Then their arms, draped around a neck or wrapped around a waist. The hands began to roam, over me, over you, until finally the two of them fell to the grassy carpet and began to writhe and tumble, the man on top one minute, the woman on top the next. They rolled around, over and over, for quite some distance, and then stopped. The man’s hairy hand slipped under the woman’s dress and grabbed one of her full breasts. My poor heart was being torn apart, and hot tears spilled out of my eyes.

The beam of light went out and the screen went dark. Pop, a lamp was lit next to the demonic machine. All around me people were gasping and panting. The hall was packed, including a bunch of bare-assed kids sitting on a table in front of me. From where he stood, alongside the machine, Babbitt looked like a celestial fairy in the light of the lamp. The spools of the machine kept turning, and turning. Finally, with a pop, they stopped.

Sima Ku jumped to his feet. “I’ll be goddamned!” he said with a hearty laugh. “Don’t stop now, play it again!”

4

On the fourth night, the movie-viewing was moved to the Sima compound’s spacious threshing floor, where the Sima Battalion – officers and men – and the commanders’ families sat in the seats of honor, village and township bigwigs sat in rows behind them, while ordinary citizens stood wherever they could find room. The large white sheet was hung in front of a lotus-covered pond, behind which the old, infirm, and crippled stood or sat, enjoying their view of the movie from the back, along with the sight of people watching it from the front.

That day was recorded in the annals of Northeast Gaomi Township, and as I think back now, I can see that nothing that day was normal. The weather was stiflingly hot at noon; the sun was black, sending fish belly-up in the river and birds falling out of the sky. A lively young soldier was felled by cholera while digging postholes and hanging the screen, and as he writhed on the ground in excruciating pain, a green liquid poured from his mouth; that was not normal. Dozens of purple snakes with yellow spots formed lines and wriggled their way down the street; that was not normal. White cranes from the marshes landed on soap-bean trees at the entrance to the village, flocks and flocks of them, their sheer weight snapping off branches, white feathers blanketing the trees. Flapping wings, necks like snakes, and stiff legs; that was not normal. Gutsy Zhang, who had gained his nickname owing to his status as the strongest man in the village, tossed a dozen stone rollers from the threshing floor into the pond; that was not normal. In midafternoon, a group of travel-weary strangers showed up. They sat on the bank of the Flood Dragon River to eat flatcakes as thin as paper and chew on radishes. When asked where they’d come from, they said Anyang, and when asked why they’d come, they said for the movies. When asked how they’d learned that movies were being shown here, they said that good news travels faster than the wind; this was not normal. Mother uncharacteristically told us a joke about a foolish son-in-law, and this too was not normal. At sunset, the sky turned radiant with burning colors that kept changing; this too was not normal. The waters of the Flood Dragon River ran blood red, and this too was not normal. As night began to fall, mosquitoes gathered in swarms that floated above the threshing floor like dark clouds, which was not normal. On the surface of the pond, late-blooming lotuses looked like celestial beings beneath the reddening sunset, and this was not normal. My goat’s milk reeked of blood, and that truly was not normal.

Having taken my evening fill of milk, I ran like the wind over to the threshing floor with Sima Liang, drawn irresistibly to the movie, running head-on toward the sunset. We set our sights on the women carrying benches and dragging their children along and the oldsters with canes, since they were the ones we could easily overtake. Xu Xian’er, a blind man with a captivatingly hoarse voice, survived by singing for handouts. He was up ahead walking fast, making his way by tapping the ground in front of him. The proprietor of the cooking oil shop, an aged single-breasted woman known as Old Jin, asked him, “Where are you off to in such a hurry, blind man?” “I’m blind,” he said. “Are you blind too?” An old man called White Face Du, a fisherman wearing his customary palm-bark cape, was carrying a stool made of woven cat-tail. “How do you expect to watch a movie, blind man?” he asked. “White Face,” the blind man replied angrily, “to me you’re a white asshole! How dare you say I’m blind! I close my eyes so I can see through worldly affairs.” Swinging his pole over his head until it whistled in the wind, he came dangerously close to snapping one of White Face Du’s egret-like legs. Du stepped up to the blind man and was about to hit him with his cattail stool, but was stopped just in time by Half Circle Fang, half of whose face had been licked away by a bear one day when he was up on Changbai Mountain gathering ginseng. “Old Du,” he said, “what would people think if you started a fight with a blind man? We all live in the same village. We win some arguments and we lose others, but it’s always a matter of someone’s bowl smashing into someone else’s plate, and that’s how it goes. Up there on Changbai Mountain, it’s no easy matter to run into a fellow villager, so you feel as if you’re with family!” All sorts of people crowded onto the Sima threshing floor. Just listen, all those families at the dinner table talking about Sima Ku’s achievements, while gossipy women gossip about the Shangguan girls. We felt light as a feather, our spirits soared, and all we wanted was for movies to be shown forever.

Sima Liang and I had reserved seats right in front of Babbitt’s machine. Shortly after we sat down and before the colors had finished burning their way across the western sky, a rank, salty smell came to us on the gloomy night winds. Directly in front of us was an empty circle marked off by quicklime. Deaf Han Guo, a crooked-legged villager, was kept busy driving township residents out of the circle with a branch from a parasol tree. His breath reeked of alcohol and bits of scallion clung to his teeth. Glaring with mantislike eyes, he swung his parasol branch mercilessly and knocked a red silk flower right off the head of the cross-eyed little sister of someone called Sleepyhead. Little Gross-eyes had had relations with the quartermaster of every military unit that had ever bivouacked in the village. At the time, she was wearing a satin undershirt given to her by Wang Baihe, the Sima Battalion quartermaster. Her smoky breath came from Quartermaster Wang. With a curse, she bent down and picked up the flower, scooping up a handful of dirt at the same time, which she flung into Deaf Han Guo’s mantislike eyes. The dirt blinded Han Guo, who threw down his parasol branch and frantically spat out a mouthful of dirt as he rubbed his eyes and cursed, “Fuck you, you cross-eyed little whore! Fuck your mother’s daughter!” Big-mouthed Zhao Six, a dealer in steamed bums, said in a soft voice, “Deaf Han Guo, why keep running around like that? Why not just come out and say fuck the cross-eyed little bitch?” The words were barely out of his mouth when a little cypress stool slammed against his shoulder. Aiya! he yelped as he spun around. The assailant was the cross-eyed girl’s brother, Sleepyhead, a skinny, haggard-looking man who parted his hair down the middle, like a scar, leaving tufts hanging down both sides. Dressed in a dusty gray silk shirt, he was quaking. His head was greasy, his eyes blinked nonstop. Sima Liang told me on the sly that the cross-eyed girl and her brother had a thing going. Where had he heard this juicy gossip? “Little Uncle,” he informed me, “my dad says they’re going to shoot Quartermaster Wang tomorrow.” “How about Sleepyhead, are they going to shoot him too?” I asked under my breath. Sleepyhead had called me a bastard once, so I had no use for him. “I’ll go talk to my dad,” Sima Liang said, “and have him shoot that little family rapist too.” “Right,” I agreed, venting my hatred. “Shoot that little family rapist!” Deaf Han Guo, tears streaming from his now nearly useless eyes, was flailing his arms in the air. Zhao Six grabbed the stool out of Sleepyhead’s hands before he could be hit a second time and flung it in the air. “Fuck your sister!” he said bluntly. Sleepyhead, his fingers twisted into claws, grabbed Zhao Six by the throat; Zhao Six grabbed Sleepyhead by the hair, and the two of them grappled all the way over to the empty circle reserved for members of the Sima Battalion, each with a death grip on the other. The cross-eyed girl joined the fray to help her brother, but landed more punches on his back than anywhere. Finally seeing an opening, she slipped around behind Zhao Six, like a bat, reached up between his legs, and grabbed hold of his balls, a move that was met with a roar of approval from Comet Guan, a martial arts expert. “That’s it, a perfect lower peach-pick!” With a scream of pain, Zhao Six let go of his opponent and bent over like a cooked shrimp. His body shrank; his face turned the color of gold in the darkening curtain of night. The cross-eyed girl squeezed with all her might. “Didn’t I hear the word fuck?” she hissed. “Well, I’m waiting!” Zhao Six crumpled to the ground, where he lay, overcome by spasms. Meanwhile, Deaf Han Guo, his face awash in tears, picked up his parasol branch and, like the demon image at the head of a funeral procession, began flailing in all directions, not caring who he hit – wheat or chaff, royalty or commoner alike – wreaking havoc on anyone within striking distance. His branch whistled through the air, as women shrieked and children wailed. Those on the outer edges of the crowd pushed up closer to watch the fun, while those in danger of being hit ran for their lives, heading the other way. Shouts swept the area like a tidal wave, as clumps of people converged, trampling and shoving each other. I watched as the branch struck the cross-eyed girl squarely on her backside, sending her darting into the crowd, where the hands of avenging souls plus a few with no other purpose than to cop a feel found their mark and were met with howls of protest.

Pow! A gunshot. Sima Ku. A black cape thrown over his shoulders, and backed up by bodyguards, he strode angrily up to the crowd in the company of Babbitt, Zhaodi, and Niandi. “Stop that!” one of the soldiers shouted. “If you don’t, there’ll be no movie.”

In fits and spurts the crowd quieted down. Sima Ku and his entourage took their seats. By then the sky had turned purple and total darkness was on its way. A thin crescent moon sent down enchanting light from the southwest corner of the sky: caught in its embrace, a single star twinkled brightly.

The horse company, the mule company, and the plainclothes soldiers had all shown up; formed into two columns, their weapons cradled in their arms or slung over their backs, they gazed at the array of women around them. A pack of lustful dogs streamed into the area. Clouds swallowed up the moon and darkness settled over the earth. Insects perched on trees set up a mournful din amid the noisy flow of the river.

“Turn on the generator!” Sima Ku ordered from where he sat off to my left. He lit a cigarette with his lighter and then extinguished the flame with a grand wave of his hand.

The generator had been set up in the ruins of the Muslim woman’s home. Black images flickered and a flashlight sent out a beam of light. At last the machine came noisily to life, the pitch alternating between high and low sounds that quickly evened out. A lamp right behind our heads lit up. “Ao! Ao!” the crowd shouted excitedly. I watched as the people in front of me spun around to look at the lamp, which turned their eyes a sparkling green.

It was a repeat of the first night, with the light searching for the screen, illuminating the moths and grasshoppers caught in its beam and projecting their huge, darting bodies on the white cloth. Soldiers and civilians gasped in surprise. But there were many more differences from the first night: to begin with, Sima Ku didn’t jump to his feet and let the beam of light shine through his ears. The darkness all around deepened, magnifying the intensity of the light. It was a humid night, with damp air from nearby fields sweeping over us. Wind whistled softly through the trees. The cries of birds gathered in the sky overhead. We could hear fish break the surface of the river, that and the snorts of mules tethered on the riverbank, animals that had transported the visitors from far away. Dog noises came from deep in the village. Green bolts of lightning flashed in the low curtain of sky off to the southwest, followed by rumbling thunder. A train loaded with artillery shells sped down the Jiaoji Line, the rhythmic clack of huge metal wheels on iron tracks wonderfully compatible with the flowing clicks of the projector. One distinct difference that night was my lack of interest in the movie playing on the screen. That afternoon, Sima Liang had said, “Little Uncle, my dad brought a new movie back from Qingdao with him, filled with images of women bathing naked.” “You’re lying,” I said. “Honest. Little Du said the head of the plainclothes soldiers went to get it on his motorcycle, and he’ll be right back.” But we wound up with the same old movie, and since Sima Liang lied to me, I pinched him on the leg. “I wasn’t lying. Maybe they’ll show this one first, and then show the new one. Let’s wait.” What happened after the bear was shot was old hat to me, and so was the scene where the hunter and the woman roll around on the ground. All I had to do was close my eyes to see every bit of it, which allowed me to turn my gaze to other people, sneaking looks here and there, and trying to see to what was going on around me.

Zhaodi, still weak from childbirth, was sitting in a red lacquered armchair specially brought out for her; a green wool overcoat was draped over her shoulders. On her left was Commander Sima, also in an armchair, his cape draped across the back of the chair. Niandi sat on his left, in a spindly rattan chair. She wore a white dress, not the one with the long train, but a tight-fitting one with a high collar. At first they all sat up straight, necks rigid, although from time to time Commander Sima’s head tilted to the right so he could whisper something to Niandi. By the time the hunter was smoking his cigarette, Zhaodi’s neck had begun to tire and a soreness had crept into her waist. She slipped down in her chair until her head rested on the back; I had only a vague glimpse of the glint from her hair ornaments and a faint whiff of camphor from her dress, but could easily hear the sound of her uneven breathing. When the big-breasted woman jumped down off the wagon and started running, Sima Ku shifted and Zhaodi was on the verge of falling asleep. Niandi, on the other hand, continued to sit up straight. Sima Ku’s left arm started to move, very slowly, a fuzzy dark shape like the tail of a dog. His hand, I saw it, his hand came to rest on Niandi’s leg. Her body stayed as it was, as if it weren’t her leg being touched. The sight displeased me, not exactly angry and not exactly afraid. My throat was dry; and I felt a cough coming on. A bolt of green lightning, crooked as a gnarled branch, split a gray cloud that hung like worn-out cotton above the marsh. Sima Ku’s hand darted in and back, lightning quick; he coughed like a little goat, and then shifted in his seat as he turned to look in the direction of the projector. I turned to do the same. Babbitt was staring idiotically at a small hole in the machine that was sending out the beam of light.

The man and woman on the screen were wrapped in each other’s arms and kissing. Sima Ku’s men were breathing heavily. Sima Ku jammed his hand roughly down between Niandi’s legs. Slowly she raised her left hand, very slowly, until it was behind her head, as if she were touching up her hair. But she wasn’t touching up her hair, she was removing a hairpin. Then the hand descended. She sat there as straight and proper as ever, seemingly absorbed in the movie. Sima Ku’s shoulder twitched; he sucked in his breath – hot or cold, I couldn’t tell. He slowly pulled his left hand back. Again he coughed like a little goat, an empty-sounding cough.

With a sigh, I turned back to the screen, but saw only fuzzy images. My palms were sweating, cold sweat. Should I let Mother in on the secret I’d discovered in the dark? No, I couldn’t tell her. I hadn’t revealed yesterday’s secret, but she had guessed anyway.

The green bolts of lightning were like molten steel that lit up the sandy ridge occupied by Birdman Han’s men, all its trees and all its huts and mud walls. They were like meandering liquid fingers that stroked the dark trees and the brown houses. Thunder grumbled like vibrating sheet metal covered with rust. The man and woman were rolling around on the grassy riverbank, and I was reminded of what I’d seen the night before.

The night before, Sima Ku had talked Mother and Second Sister into going to the church to watch the movie. During the scene where they were rolling around on the grassy ground, Sima Ku got up quietly and left. I followed him as he hugged the wall, looking more like a thief than a military commander; he must have been a thief at one time. He climbed the low southern wall into our yard, the very path my third brother-in-law, Speechless Sun, had taken; it was also a path the Bird Fairy knew well. I didn’t have to climb the wall, since I knew another way in. Mother had locked the gate and hidden the key between two nearby bricks; I could find it with my eyes closed. But I didn’t need that either, since there was a hole at the bottom of the gate that had been put there for dogs during Shangguan Lü’s time. The dogs were gone; the hole remained. I was small enough to wriggle through, and so were Sima Liang and Sha Zaohua. So now I was inside the gate, in a small room that served as a passageway leading to the western part of the compound. Two steps and I was standing at the gate to the west wing. Everything was where it had always been: millstone, feeding trough for the mules, and Laidi’s grass mat. It was there on that patch of grass that she’d lost her bearings and gone mad. In order to keep her from bursting in on Babbitt’s wedding ceremony, Sima Ku had tied her by the wrist to the window frame and left her there for three days. I assumed that he wanted to liberate First Sister and help open her eyes. So what happened?

Sima Ku’s frame seemed larger than ever in the hazy starlight. He didn’t spot me as he groped his way in, since I was hiding in a corner. I heard a thump shortly after he entered the room – he’d bumped into a metal bucket that we’d put there as a chamber pot for Laidi. She giggled in the dark. A tiny flame lit the room up, and there was Laidi, lying on her straw mat, her hair spread out around her, teeth white as snow; her black robe couldn’t cover her completely. Scary? She was nothing less than a demon. Sima Ku reached out and touched her face; that didn’t frighten her. The cigarette lighter went out. Goats in the pen pawed the ground. Sima Ku’s laughter. He said, “We’re brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and there’s nothing wrong with that, so why not give it a go? I thought you really wanted it. Well, here I am…” Laidi shrieked, a crazed sound that tore through the roof. “It’s pretty much what you said that day – lust, suffering! You’re a wave and I’m a boat. You’re a drought, and I am rain. I’m your savior.” The two of them gyrated together, as if submerged in water, as if clearing out a hollow filled with eels. Laidi’s shrieks were more shrill than the Bird Fairy’s ever were… Without a sound, I wriggled through the dog door and went back into the lane, cold sweat sticking to my body.

The movie was nearing its end when Sima Ku quietly reentered the church. Seeing that it was the commander, the people made room for him to return to his seat. As he walked by, he rubbed my head, and I detected the smell of Laidi’s breasts on his hand. He whispered something to Second Sister once he was in his seat, and she appeared to laugh in response. The lights came on, bringing the viewers up short, as if for a moment they didn’t know where they were. Sima Ku stood up and announced, “Tomorrow night the movie will be shown at the threshing floor. Your commander wants to bring benefits to this area through the introduction of Western culture.” That brought the people back to reality, and the clamor that followed drowned out the sound of the projector. Later, after all the visitors had left, Sima Ku said to Mother, “Well, madam, what do you say? It was worth coming to see, wasn’t it? The next thing I’m going to do is build a movie house for all of Northeast Gaomi. This Babbitt fellow can do just about anything, and you have me to thank for getting him as a son-in-law.” “That’s enough,” Second Sister said. “Let’s take Mother home.” “You can stop wagging your tail,” Mother said. “Nothing good comes of being proud, like dogs eating shit in a crowd.”

Somehow or other, Mother found out what had happened that night with Laidi. The next morning Sima Ku and Second Sister came by with the grain ration, and as they were about to leave, Mother said, “I want to talk to my son-in-law about something.” “Whatever it is,” Second Sister said, “you can say it in front of me.” “You go on,” Mother insisted as she took Sima Ku into the next room. “What do you plan to do with her?” Mother asked him. “Do with who?” “Don’t play dumb with me!” Mother said. “I’m not playing dumb,” he said. “Choose the path you’re going to take,” Mother said. “What paths are you talking about?” Sima Ku asked. “I’ll tell you,” she said. “The first path is to marry her, either as first wife or as second wife or as one of two equal wives. You can work that out with my second daughter. The second is to kill her!” Sima Ku rubbed the sides of his trousers with both hands, although in a different frame of mind from the previous time he’d done the same thing. “I’ll give you three days to make your choice. You can leave now.”

Sixth Sister sat there without moving, as if nothing had happened. I heard Sima Ku cough, a sound that both thrilled and saddened me. On the screen, the man and woman were lying together under a tree, the woman’s head resting on the man’s chest. She was gazing up at the fruit on the tree, while the man was chewing on a blade of grass, lost in thought. The woman pushed herself up into a sitting position and turned to face him, the upper half of her bulbous breasts exposed above her dress. Her cleavage showed up purple, like an eel’s hollow in the shallows of a river. This was the fourth time I’d seen that nest, and I yearned to wriggle into that hollow. But she moved slightly, and the hollow disappeared. She gave the man a shove and growled something at him. But he kept his eyes shut and continued chewing the blade of grass. Eventually, she slapped him and burst into tears. The sound of her crying wasn’t much different than that of Chinese women. The man opened his eyes and spat the pulpy blade of grass into the woman’s face. A strong gust of wind made the tree on the screen sway, sending pieces of fruit bumping against each other. The sound of rustling leaves drifted over from the riverbank, and I couldn’t tell if the wind on the screen was rustling leaves on the river or wind from the river was rustling leaves on the screen. Another bolt of lightning sent a green light through the sky, followed by the rumble of thunder. The wind was picking up, and the viewers began to fidget. A swarm of sparkles flew through the beam of light. “It’s raining,” somebody shouted, just as the man was walking toward the wagon, the barefoot woman on his arm, her dress hanging crooked on her body. Sima Ku stood up abruptly. “Turn it off, that’s it!” he said. “Water will ruin the projector!” He was blocking the light, bringing roars of disapproval from the crowd, so he sat back down. Sprays of water showed up on the screen. The man and woman jumped into the river. Another bolt of lightning snaked through the sky, its crackle hanging in the air for a long time and darkening the beam of light from the projector. A dozen or so black objects flew in, giving the impression that the lightning bolt had sent down a shower of turds. A violent explosion erupted from somewhere in the ranks of Sima Battalion soldiers. A thunderous blast, flashes of green and yellow light, accompanied by the pungent smell of gunpowder at about the same time. I wound up sitting on somebody’s belly, and I felt something hot and wet on my head. I reached up and touched my face; it was sticky. The air was thick with the stench of blood. Screams and shouts erupted from panicky, blinded people. The beam of light shone on undulating backs, bloody heads, terrified faces. The man and woman frolicking in the American river had been blown to bits. Lightning. Thunder. Green blood. Pieces of flesh flying through the air. An American movie. A hand grenade. Golden flames snaking out of the barrel of a gun. Don’t panic, brothers. Another series of explosions. Mother! Son! A living, severed arm. Intestines twisted around a leg. Raindrops bigger than silver coins. Eye-searing light. A night of mystery. “Get down on your stomachs, villagers, and don’t move! Officers and men of the Sima Battalion, don’t move! Lay down your weapons if you want to live! Lay them down or die!” The commands came from all directions, bearing down on us…

5

Before the concussion waves died out, seemingly countless burning torches bore down on us, as the soldiers of Lu Liren’s independent 16th Regiment menacingly pushed their way toward us, black palm-bark capes draped over their shoulders, rifles with fixed bayonets at the ready, shouting in cadence. The torchbearers were civilians with white bandannas tied around their heads, mostly women with pageboy haircuts. Their blazing torches, made of old cotton wadding and rags soaked in kerosene, were held high to shine down on soldiers of the 16th Regiment. The crackle of gunfire emerged from the center of the Sima Battalion, sending a dozen or so 16th Regiment soldiers crumpling to the ground like kernels of grain. But soldiers behind them quickly took their places, and a dozen hand grenades flew through the air toward us, the explosions sounding like the sky had fallen and the earth split. “Give it up, men!” Sima Ku shouted. Weapons were thrown willy-nilly to the ground lit up by all those torches.

Sima Ku was holding Zhaodi in his bloody arms. “Zhaodi!” he screamed. “Zhaodi, my dear wife, wake up…”

A shaky hand grabbed my arm. I looked up and, in the light of the torches, saw Niandi’s ashen face. She was also lying on the ground, pressed down by several broken bodies. “Jintong, Jintong…” She could barely get the words out. “Are you all right?” My nose ached and tears gushed from my eyes. “I’m okay, Sixth Sister,” I sobbed. “How about you, are you okay?” She reached out with both hands. “Dear little brother,” she pleaded, “help me. Take my hands.” My hands were green and oily; so were hers. I grabbed hold of her hands, like catching live loaches, but they slipped out of my grip. By then, everyone else was lying on the ground; no one dared to stand up. The beam of light was still fixed on the white screen, where the clash between the American couple was reaching its climax. The woman was holding a knife above the snoring figure of the man. The young American, Babbitt, was shouting anxiously from alongside the projector, “Niandi, Niandi, where are you?” “Here I am, Babbitt, help me, Babbitt…” Sixth Sister reached a hand out to her Babbitt. She was wheezing, her face covered with tears and snot. Babbitt’s tall, slender frame began to move as he struggled to reach Niandi. He was having trouble walking, like a horse stuck in the mud.

“Stand where you are!” someone bellowed as he fired into the air. “Don’t move!”

Babbitt flattened himself out on the ground as if a sword had cut him down.

Sima Liang came crawling out of somewhere. A trickle of sticky blood was seeping out of his wounded ear onto his cheek and neck and into his hair. He lifted me up and felt me all over with his stiff fingers to see if I was all right. “You’re fine, Little Uncle,” he said. “Your arms and legs are still whole” Then he bent down and lifted the bodies off of Sixth Sister, then helped her to her feet. Her high-collared white dress was blood-spattered.

As the rain pelted down on us, we were herded into a mill house, the township’s tallest building, which now served as a stockade. Thinking back now, I realize that we had plenty of opportunities to escape. The heavy rain put out the torches carried by 16th Regiment civilians, and the soldiers themselves stumbled along as they tried to protect themselves from icy raindrops that nearly blinded them. Two yellow flashlights up front were all that led the way. And yet, no one ran away. Prisoners and guards suffered equally. As we neared the dilapidated gate, the soldiers shoved us out of the way to get in.

The mill house shuddered in the deluge, and when lightning lit up the area, I saw water cascading in through the cracks in the sheet metal roof. A bright glistening cataract poured off the sheet metal eaves, sending a river of gray water down the ditch outside the gate into the street. Sixth Sister, Sima Liang, and I were separated as we slogged our way from the threshing floor to the mill house. Directly in front of me was a 16th Regiment soldier in a black palm-bark cape. His lips were too short to cover his yellow teeth and purple gums; his gray eyes were clouded. After a bolt of lightning had died out, he sneezed loudly in the dark, sending a strong whiff of cheap tobacco and radish right into my face, tickling my nose uncomfortably. Sneezes burst forth in the darkness all around me. I wanted to locate Sixth Sister and Sima Liang, but didn’t dare call out to them, so I waited until the next brief flash of lightning to look for them amid the earthshaking peal of thunder that followed, filling the air with the smell of burning sulfur. I spotted Sleepyhead’s gaunt, yellow face behind a little soldier. He looked like a graceful specter that had just climbed out of a grave. His face turned from yellow to purple, his hair looked like two pieces of felt, his silk jacket stuck to his body, his neck was stretched taut, his Adam’s apple was as big as a hen’s egg, and you could count his ribs. His eyes were graveyard will-o’-the-wisps.

Just before dawn the rain diminished and a gentler pitter-patter replaced the pounding on the sheet-metal roof. Lightning strikes had lessened a bit, and the frightful blues and greens had given way to softer yellows and whites. Thunder had moved off into the distance, while the winds blew in from the northeast, rattling the metal sheets on the roof and letting standing water pour in through the openings. As the bone-chilling wind turned our joints stiff, we all huddled together, friend and foe alike. Women and children were crying in the dark. I felt the eggs between my legs shrink, bringing stabbing pains to my intestines, and spreading to my stomach. My guts felt frozen, a mass of ice. If anyone had felt like leaving the mill house at that moment, no one would have stopped them. But none of us even tried.

A while later, some people showed up at the gate. By then I was numb, leaning against the back of someone, who was leaning against me. The splashing sounds of people wading through water came from beyond the gate, after which several swaying beams of light shone through the darkness. A bunch of men in raincoats, only their faces showing, stood in the gateway. “Men of the 16th Regiment,” someone shouted, “fall in. You must return to headquarters.” The shouts were hoarse, but I could tell that normal voice was loud and clear, capable of stirring people up. I knew who it was the second I laid eyes on him: the face above the raincoat and under the hat was that of the commander and political commissar of the demolition battalion, Lu Liren. Word of the elevation of his unit into an independent force had reached me that spring, and now here he was.

“Hurry it up,” Lu Liren ordered. “All the other units have been given quarters, so it’s time to head back, comrades, to soak your feet and drink some nice ginger tea.”

The soldiers piled out of the mill house as fast as they could and lined up on the water-soaked street. Several men who looked like cadres raised hurricane lanterns and began shouting orders. “Company Three, follow me!” Company Seven, follow me!”

The soldiers marched off behind lanterns, and were replaced by soldiers in palm-bark capes who walked up cradling tommy guns. Their squad leader saluted. “Commander,” he reported, “the security squad will stay behind to guard the prisoners.” Lu Liren returned the salute. “Guard them well. Don’t let any of them escape. I want a count first thing every morning. If I’m not mistaken,” he said, turning to the mill house with a smile, “my old friend Sima Ku is in there.”

“Fuck you and your ancestors!” Sima Ku cursed from behind a large millstone. “Jiang Liren, you despicable little runt, I’m right here!”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Lu Liren said with a laugh before rushing off and leaving the leader of the security squad standing in the lamplight. “I know that some of you have weapons hidden on you,” he said. “I’m in the light and you’re in the dark, which makes me an easy target. But I strongly advise you to put such ideas out of your head, since I am the only one you’ll hit. But” – here he made a sweeping motion with his hand at the dozen or so soldiers carrying tommy guns – “once those open fire, a lot more than one of you will fall. We treat our prisoners well. At daybreak tomorrow we’ll sort you out. Those willing to join us will be welcomed with open arms. Those who aren’t will be given money for the road and sent home.”

The only sound in the mill house was the splash of water. The squad leader ordered his men to close the rotting gate. Light from his lantern streamed in through the holes and cracks and landed on several puffy faces.

Once the soldiers had departed, space opened up in the mill house, so I groped my way toward the spot where I’d heard Sima Ku just a moment before. I stumbled over hot, trembling legs and heard lots of cadenced, tuneful moans. The massive mill house was the creation of Sima Ku and his brother Sima Ting. After it was built, not a single bag of flour was ever milled there, because the blades of the windmill were blown away by violent winds the first night, leaving behind a few slivers of wood that rattled the year round. The building was big enough to accommodate a circus. An even dozen millstones the size of small hills stood obstinately on the brick floor.

Two days before, I’d come there with Sima Liang to look around, because he had suggested to his father that he convert the place into a movie theater. I shivered the minute I set foot in the mill house. A pack of ferocious rats rushed us, filling the immense building with their squeaks; they stopped just before they reached us. One big white rat with red eyes hunkered down at the head of the pack, raised its front claws, so fine they seemed carved from jade, and stroked its snowy white whiskers. Its beady eyes flashed as dozens of black rats formed a semicircle behind it, eyeing us gleefully, ready to charge. Fearfully, I backed up, my scalp tightening, cold chills running up and down my spine. Sima Liang shielded me with his body, even though he only came up to my chin. First he bent over, then he got down on his haunches and glared at the white rat. Not backing down a bit, the rat stopped stroking its whiskers and sat like a dog, mouth and whiskers twitching. Neither Sima Liang nor the rat was going to budge. What were those rats, especially the white one, thinking? And what was running through the mind of Sima Liang, a boy given to making me unhappy, but someone I was growing ever closer to? Was this a staring contest? A battle of wills, like a needle and wheat spike trying to see which was sharper? If so, who was the needle and who was the wheat spike? I actually thought I heard the rat say, This is our turf, and you’re not welcome here. Then I heard Sima Liang say, This mill house belongs to the Sima family. My uncle and my father built it, so for me it’s like going home. This is my place. The white rat said, The strong man is king, the weak man a thief. Sima Liang countered with, A thousand pounds of rat is no match for eight pounds of tomcat. To which the white rat replied, You’re a boy, not a cat. I was in my last life, Sima Liang said, an eight-pound cat. How do you expect me to believe that? the white rat said. Sima Liang put both hands on the floor as his eyes slanted and a snarl split his mouth. Meow – meow – the shrill cry of a tomcat bounced off the mill house walls. Meow – meow – meeeow – the white rat, thrown into panicky confusion, fell back on all fours and was about to beat a hasty retreat when Sima Liang pounced and caught it in his hands. He squashed it before it had a chance to bite. The others fled in all directions. Me? Following Sima Liang’s lead, I took out after them, screeching like a cat. But they were gone before I knew it. Sima Liang laughed and turned back to look at me. My god! They really were cat’s eyes, giving off those devilish green lights. He tossed the dead white rat into the hole in the center of one of the millstones. We each grabbed one of the wooden handles and pushed with all our might; the thing refused to budge, so we gave up, and started prowling the mill house, moving from one millstone to the next, finding each of the others quite easy to turn.

“Little Uncle,” Sima Liang said, “let’s open our own mill.” I didn’t know what to say to that, since the only worthwhile things in my life were breasts and the milk they held. It was a glorious afternoon, with bright sunlight streaming in through the gaps in the sheet-metal roof and the lattice in the window and falling on the brick floor, which was a repository for rat and bat droppings; we spotted red-winged little bats hanging from the rafters, and another the size of a conical rain hat slipping through the air above them. Its squeaks sounded just right for its body, shrill and tapered, and made me shudder. Holes had been drilled in the centers of all the millstones, with China fir poles sticking up through the sheet-metal roof; the tips of the poles were the wheels on which the blades had once, and briefly, spun. Sima Ku and Sima Ting’s assumption was: so long as there’s wind, the blades will turn and the wheels will rotate, turning the China fir poles and the millstones below. But the Sima brothers’ ingenious concept had been foiled by reality.

As I moved among the millstones looking for Sima Liang, I spotted several rats scurrying up and down the poles. Someone was on top of one of the millstones, eyes blazing. I knew it was Sima Liang. He reached down and grabbed my hand with his icy claw. With his help, I stepped on the wooden handle and climbed up. It was wet, with gray water emerging from the hole.

“Remember that white rat, Little Uncle?” he asked with an air of mystery. I nodded in the darkness. “It’s right here,” he said softly. “I’m going to skin it and make earmuffs for Granny.” An anemic bolt of lightning knifed through the distant southern sky and threw some thin light into the mill house. I saw the dead rat in his hand. Its body was wet, its disgusting, skinny tail hung limp. “Throw it away,” I said. “Why should I?” he asked unhappily. “It’s disgusting. Don’t tell me it doesn’t disgust you.” In the silence that followed, I heard the dead rat drop back into the millstone hole. “What do you think, Little Uncle, what are they going to do to us?” he asked dejectedly. Yes, what were they going to do to us? The splash of water beyond the gate signaled a change of the guard. The new guards were snorting like horses. “It’s cold,” one of them complained. “It doesn’t feel like August here. Do you think the water’s going to freeze?” “Don’t be silly,” another replied.

“Do you wish you were home, Little Uncle?” Sima Liang asked. The toasty brick bed, Mother’s warm embrace, the nighttime wanderings of Big Mute and Little Mute, crickets in the oven platform, sweet goat’s milk, the creaking of Mother’s joints and her deep coughs, the silly laughter of First Sister out in the yard, the soft feathers of night owls, the sound of snakes catching mice behind the storeroom… how could I not with that? I sniffled. “Let’s run away, Little Uncle,” he said. “How can we, with guards at the door?” I said softly. He grabbed my arm. “See this fir pole?” he said as he laid my hand on the pole that went all the way up to the roof. It was wet. “We can shinny up, make a hole in the sheet-metal roof, and wriggle out.” “What then?” I asked, unconvinced. “We jump to the ground,” he said. “After that, we go home.” I tried to picture us standing on the rusty, clattery sheet-metal roof, and felt my knees begin to knock. “It’s too high,” I muttered. “We’d break a leg jumping down from there.” “Don’t worry about it, Little Uncle, leave everything to me. I jumped down off this roof once this spring. There’s a bunch of lilac bushes under the eaves. Their springy branches will break our fall.” I looked up at the spot where the pole met the sheet metal; rays of gray light shone through; bright water slithered down the pole. “It’ll be light soon, Little Uncle. Let’s go,” he urged anxiously. What could I do? I nodded.

“I’ll go first and move the sheet metal out of the way,” he said as he patted me on the shoulder to show he had everything under control. “Give me a boost.” He wrapped his arms around the slippery pole, jumped up, and rested his feet on my shoulders. “Stand up,” he urged, “stand up!” With my arms around the pole, I stood up, my legs shaking. Rats clinging to the pole squeaked as they jumped to the floor. I felt him press down with his feet as he plastered himself up against the pole like a gecko. In the muted light seeping in, I watched him shinny up the pole, slipping back every once in a while, until he finally made it to the top.

There he hit the sheet metal with his fist, making loud clangs and letting more rainwater in. It landed on my face, some of it entering my mouth and leaving the bitter taste of rust, not to mention tiny metal filings. He was breathing hard in the dark and grunting from exertion. I heard the sheet metal shift as a cascade of water hit me, and I held tightly to the pole to keep from being swept off the millstone. Sima Liang pushed with his head to make the hole bigger. It strained for a moment before giving way, and a raggedy triangle opened up in the roof, through which beams of gray starlight streamed. Amid the stars in the sky, I spotted several that hardly shone at all. “Little Uncle,” he said from beyond the rafters, “wait there while I take a look around. Then I’ll come down and help you up.” With an upward surge, he stuck his head up through the new skylight to look around.

“Somebody’s on the roof!” a soldier at the gate shouted. Bright tongues of light split the darkness as bullets ricocheted off the sheet metal with loud pings. Sima Liang slid down the pole so fast he nearly flattened me. He wiped the water from his face and spat out a mouthful of metal filings. His teeth were chattering. “It’s freezing up there!”

The deep darkness just before dawn had passed, and the inside of the mill house began to turn light. Sima Liang and I were huddled together; I could feel his heart beating fast against my ribs, like a feverish sparrow. I was weeping out of despair. Brushing my chin with the top of his nice, round head, he said, “Don’t cry, Little Uncle, they won’t dare hurt you. Your fifth brother-in-law is their superior officer.”

There was now enough light to get a good look at our surroundings. The twelve enormous millstones, one of which Sima Liang and I occupied, shimmered majestically. His uncle, Sima Ting, occupied another. Water dripped from the tip of his nose as he winked at us. Wet rats covered the tops of the other millstones, huddled together, their beady little eyes a glossy black, their tails like worms. They looked pitiful and loathsome at the same time. Water puddled on the floor and dripped in through the roof. The soldiers of the Sima Battalion stood in tight little groups, their green uniforms, now black, sticking to their bodies. The looks in their eyes and the expressions on their faces were terrifyingly similar to those on the rats. For the most part, the civilian prisoners were off by themselves, only a few choosing to mix with the soldiers, like the occasional stalk of wheat in a cornfield. There were more men than women, some of whom held whimpering children in their arms. The women sat on the floor; most of the men were on their haunches, except for a few who leaned against the walls. Those walls had been whitewashed at one time, but now that they were wet, the plaster rubbed off on the men’s backs, changing their color. I spotted the cross-eyed girl in the crowd. She was sitting in the mud with her legs out in front, leaning against another woman. Her head was lolling against her shoulder, as if her neck were broken. Old Jin, the woman with one breast, was sitting on the buttocks of a man. Who was he? He was sprawled in the water, facedown, white whiskers floating on the surface, clots of black blood shifting in the water around them like little tadpoles. Only Old Jin’s right breast ever developed; the left side of her chest was flat as a whetstone, which made the one breast seem to stick up higher than normal, like a lonely hill on the plains. The nipple was big and hard, nearly bursting through her thin blouse. People called her “Oilcan,” since they said that whenever her nipple was aroused, you could hang an oilcan from it. Decades later, when I finally had the chance to lie atop her naked body, I noticed that the only sign of a breast on her left side was a little nipple the size of a bean, like a mole announcing its existence. She was sitting on the dead man’s buttocks, rubbing her face, as if deranged; she’d rub her face, and then rub her hands on her knees, as if she had just crawled out of a spider hole and was tearing translucent cobwebs off her face. The other people were in a variety of postures and attitudes. Some were crying, others were laughing, while still others were mumbling with their eyes shut. One woman was rocking her head back and forth, like a water snake or a crane at water’s edge. Married to Geng Da’le, the shrimp paste seller, she had a long neck and a small head, much too small for her body. People said she was a transformed snake, and her head sure looked like it. It stuck up out of a group of women whose heads all hung forward, and in the dank coldness of the mill house, with its muted light, the way her head swayed back and forth was all the proof I needed that she’d once been a snake and was now turning back into one. I didn’t have the nerve to go take a look at her body, but even when I forced myself to look away, her image stayed with me.

A lemon-colored snake slithered down one of the China fir poles. It had a flat head like a spatula and a purple tongue that kept darting in and out of its mouth. Each time its head touched the top of the millstone, it went limp, turned a right angle, and slithered off in a new direction, heading straight for rats in the center of the millstone. The rats raised their claws amid a frenzy of squeaks. As the snake’s head moved in a straight line, its thick body slithered smoothly down the pole, uncoiling as it went, as if the pole and not the snake were turning. When it reached the center of the millstone, the head abruptly rose at least a foot into the air and leaned backward, like a hand. The spot behind its head contorted, flattened out and widened, displaying a latticework pattern. The movement of the purple tongue quickened, a horrifying sight accompanied by a bone-chilling hiss. The rats made themselves as small as possible, squeaking all the while. One large rat stood up on its hind legs and bared its claws, like holding a book, then shifted its rear legs before leaping into the air, straight into the triangular opening of the snake’s mouth. The snake closed its mouth, leaving the back half of the rat sticking out straight, its rigid tail still waving comically.

Sima Ku was sitting on an abandoned China fir pole, his head sagging onto his chest, his hair in total disarray. Second Sister lay across his knees, her head cradled in the crook of his arm, face-up, the skin of her neck pulled taut. Her mouth hung slack, a black hole in her ghostly white face. Second Sister was dead. Babbitt was sitting close to Sima Ku; his young face had the look of an old man. The upper half of Sixth Sister’s body lay across Babbitt’s knees, and it never stopped twitching. Babbitt stroked her shoulders with a hand made puffy by all the rain. Behind the decrepit gate, a skinny man was preparing to kill himself. His trousers had fallen down to his thighs, revealing underpants that were soiled by mud. He wanted to tie his cotton belt to the top of the doorframe, but couldn’t reach that high, even when he jumped; he was so weak he barely left the ground. I saw by the way the back of his head protruded that it was Sima Liang’s uncle, Sima Ting. Finally, too exhausted to try any longer, he reached down, pulled up his trousers, and retied his belt around his waist. He turned and gave the crowd of onlookers an embarrassed smile before plopping down in the mud and beginning to sob.

The morning winds blew in from the fields, like a wet cat with a glistening carp in its mouth, prowling arrogantly on the sheet-metal roof. The red morning sun climbed out of the hollows, filled with rainwater, dripping wet and exhausted. The Flood Dragon River was at flood stage, the crashing of its waves louder than ever in the morning quiet. We were sitting on the millstone, where our gaze was met by misty red sunbeams. The glass in the windows was spotless after a night of unremitting rain; August fields, obstructed by neither the building’s roof nor trees, were right there in front of our eyes. Outside, the flow of rainwater had washed the street clean of dust and exposed the hard chestnut-colored ground below. The surface of the street shimmered as if varnished; a pair of not quite dead striped carp lay in the street, tails still flapping weakly. A couple of men in gray uniforms – one tall, the other short; the tall one skinny, the short one fat – were staggering down the street carrying a big bamboo basket filled with a dozen or more big fish, including striped carp, grass carp, even a silvery eel. Excited by the sight of the two fish on the street, they ran over – stumbled, actually, like a crane and a duck tied together. “Big carp!” the short, fat one said. “Two of them!” the tall, skinny one said. I could nearly make out their faces as they bent down to scoop up the fish, and I was pretty sure they were two waiters from the banquet after Sixth Sister and Babbitt’s wedding, a couple of planted agents from the 16th Battalion. The men standing guard at the mill house watched them scoop up the fish. The platoon leader yawned as he walked up to the men. “Fat Liu and Skinny Hou, this is what’s called finding balls in your pants and landing fish on dry ground.” “Platoon Leader Ma,” Skinny Hou said, “it’s a tough assignment.” “Not really, but I am hungry,” Platoon Leader Ma replied. Fat Liu said, “Come over for some fish soup. A victory like ours deserves a reward of good food and drink for the soldiers.” Platoon Leader Ma said, “You’ll be lucky if those few fish are enough for you cooks, let alone the soldiers.” “You’re an officer, whatever your rank,” Skinny Hou said. “And officers need to back up what they say with proof, they must temper their criticisms with political necessities. There is no room for irresponsible talk.” “I was just joking. Don’t take everything so serious!” “Skinny Hou,” Platoon Leader Ma said, “in the few months since I last saw you, you’ve picked up the gift of gab!”

While they were squabbling, Mother walked slowly and heavily, but with determination, toward us, a red sunset at her back. “Mother -” I sobbed as I jumped down off the millstone. I wished I could have flown into her arms, but I slipped and fell in the mud at the foot of the millstone.

When I came to my senses again, the first thing I saw was Sixth Sister’s agitated face. Sima Ku, Sima Ting, Babbitt, and Sima Liang were all standing beside me. “Mother’s here,” I said to Sixth Sister. “I saw her with my own eyes.” I struggled out of Sixth Sister’s grasp and ran toward the door, where I bumped into someone’s shoulder. That rocked me for a moment, but then I took off again, cutting through the crowds of people. The gate stopped me. Pounding it with my fists, I cried out, “Mother – Mother -!”

A soldier stuck the black muzzle of his tommy gun in through a hole in the gate. “Pipe down! We’ll let you out after breakfast.”

Mother heard my shouts and began walking faster. She waded across the ditch at the side of the road and headed straight for the mill house. Platoon Leader Ma stopped her. “That’s far enough, elder sister!”

But Mother reached up, pushed him out of the way, and kept walking without a word. Her face was encased in the red light, as if smeared with blood; her mouth was twisted in anger.

The guards quickly closed ranks, forming a line like a black wall.

“Stop right there, old lady!” Platoon Leader Ma ordered as he grabbed Mother’s arm and would not let her proceed any farther. Mother strained to break his grip. “Who are you, and what do you think you’re doing?” Platoon Leader Ma asked angrily. He jerked her backward, nearly causing her to fall.

“Mother!” I cried through the door.

Mother’s eyes turned blue and her twisted mouth flew open, releasing a series of grunts. She broke for the door with no thought for anything else. But Platoon Leader Ma shoved her from behind, knocking her into the roadside ditch. Water splashed in all directions. Mother rolled once in the water and clambered to her knees. The water reached her navel. She crawled out of the ditch, drenched, muddy bubbles clinging to her hair. She’d lost one of her shoes, but hobbled forward on crippled bound feet.

“I said stop right there!” Platoon Leader Ma cocked his tommy gun and aimed it at her chest. “Are you trying to incite a jailbreak?” he fumed.

“Get out of my way!”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I want to find my son!”

My crying got louder. Sima Liang, who was standing next to me, shouted, “Granny!”

Sixth Sister yelled, “Mother -”

Moved by our weeping, the women in the mill house began to sob. Their sobbing mixed with the sounds of men blowing their noses and the guards’ grumblings.

Nervously, the guards made an about-face and pointed their weapons at the rotting gate.

“Stop that racket!” Platoon Leader Ma shouted. “You’ll be out of here soon.” Then he turned to Mother. “Go on home, elder sister,” he said comfortingly. “As long as your son hasn’t done anything wrong, you have my word we’ll let him go.”

“My child,” she moaned as she ran around Platoon Leader Ma and headed for the gate.

Platoon Leader Ma jumped in front of her. “Elder sister,” he said, “I’m warning you. One more step and I’ll have no choice but to take action.”

“Do you have a mother? Are you human?” She reached up and slapped him, and then set out again, rocking back and forth. The guards at the gate parted to make way for her.

Platoon Leader Ma, holding his cheek, shouted, “Stop her!”

The guards just stood there, as if they hadn’t heard him.

Mother was at the doorway. I reached out through a hole in the door, waved, and shouted.

Mother pulled on the rusty lock, and I could hear her labored breathing.

The lock clanged loudly and a round of gunfire tore crisply through the door, sending chips of rotting wood raining down on me.

“Don’t move, old lady!” Platoon Leader Ma screeched. “I won’t miss the next time!” He fired another shot into the air.

Mother jerked the lock free and pushed the door open. I rushed up and buried my head in her bosom. Sima Liang and Sixth Sister were right behind me.

From behind us, someone shouted, “Make a break for it, men. It’s our only chance!”

The men of the Sima Battalion rushed the door like a tidal wave, their hard bodies knocking us out of the way. I fell, and Mother fell on top of me.

Chaos reigned in the mill house – wails, shouts, and screams all merged together. As men of the 16th Regiment were sent tumbling, Sima Battalion soldiers grabbed their weapons and bullets began to fly, shattering glass. Platoon Leader Ma was knocked into the ditch, where he cut loose with his tommy gun, sending ten or more Sima Battalion troops crumpling to the ground like toy soldiers. Their comrades rushed him, pushed him down into the water, where they punched and kicked him ferociously, sending sprays of water everywhere.

Units of the 16th Regiment came running down the street, shouting and firing their weapons. Sima Battalion soldiers scattered, but were cut down by a merciless fusillade.

In the midst of all this activity, we flattened our backs against the mill house wall and pushed away everyone who came close to us.

An old 16th Regiment soldier fell to one knee beneath a poplar tree, held his rifle in both hands, closed one eye, and took aim. The rifle jerked upward, and a Sima Battalion soldier fell. More shots were fired, the spent cartridges falling into the water, where they sizzled and created steamy bubbles. The old soldier aimed again, this time at a big, swarthy soldier who had already run several hundred yards to the south. He was hopping through a bean field like a kangaroo, heading toward the bordering sorghum field. The old soldier unhurriedly pulled off another round, the crack hanging in the air when the runner fell head over heels in the field. The old soldier pulled back the bolt of his rifle, ejecting a shiny cartridge that arched end over end in the air.

Amid all that was going on, Babbitt caught my eye. He was like a brainless mule in a herd of sheep. With animals baaing all around him, he pushed and shoved, eyes big as saucers, clomped through the mud with heavy hooves, kicking the sheep out of his way as he went. Speechless Sun was like an ebony tiger, swishing his sword over his head as he led a dozen fearless swordsmen to block the sheep’s way. Heads rolled, bloodcurdling screams blanketed the wilderness. Surviving sheep turned to run, seemingly lost, trying to escape any way they could. Babbitt froze and cast blank looks all around. He came to his senses as the mute charged him, and he bolted toward us as fast as he could run, gasping for breath, white foam filling the corners of his mouth. The old soldier took aim at him.

“Old Cao, hold your fire!” Lu Liren shouted as he bounded out of the crowd. “Comrades, don’t shoot that American!”

The men of the 16th Regiment formed a human net, closing ranks as they drew nearer. The prisoners were still trying to get away, but they were like fish caught in the net, and before long they had all been herded onto the street in front of the mill house.

The mute charged into the gang of prisoners and drove his fist into Babbitt’s shoulder, the force of the blow spinning him in a complete circle. Face-to-face with the mute again, he babbled something in his own language, which could have been loud curses and could have been a highly vocal protest. The mute raised his sword, which glinted in the sunlight. Babbitt raised his arms, as if to ward off the cold shards of light.

“Babbitt -” Sixth Sister jumped up from beside Mother and stumbled forward. But she fell before she’d taken more than a few steps, her left foot sticking out from under her right leg as she lay in the putrid mud.

“Somebody grab Speechless Sun!” Lu Liren commanded. Members of the mute’s fearless squad grabbed his arm. Savage grunts tore from his throat as he lifted the soldiers holding him into the air like rag dolls. Jumping across the ditch, Lu Liren raised his arm. “Speechless Sun,” he called out, “remember the policy on prisoners!” Speechless Sun stopped struggling when he saw Lu Liren, and his comrades let go. He stuck his sword in his belt, reached out and grabbed Babbitt’s clothes with fingers like steel pincers, and dragged him away from the other prisoners, all the way up to where Lu Liren was standing. Babbitt said something to Lu Liren in his foreign tongue. Lu Liren responded briefly in the same language, punctuated by slashing gestures. Babbitt quieted down. Sixth Sister reached out to him and moaned, “Babbitt…"

Babbitt leaped across the ditch and pulled Sixth Sister to her feet. Her left leg hung limp, as if dead, and he had to hold her up with his arm around her waist. Her filthy dress, which looked like a wrinkled onionskin, crept up as her pale buttocks began slipping toward the ground. She hung on to Babbitt’s neck, who hooked his arms under her armpits. The two of them, husband and wife, were standing – sort of. When Babbitt’s sad blue eyes fell on Mother, he hobbled toward her, carrying Sixth Sister, who could no longer walk. “Mama,” he said in Chinese, his lips quivering, large tears creeping out of his eyes.

Water sluiced down the ditch as Platoon Leader Ma shoved the corpse of a Sima Battalion soldier off of him and climbed slowly to his feet, like a gigantic toad. His raincoat was spattered with water, blood, and mud, the patterns on a toad’s back. His legs were bent as he stood up, quaking fearfully, pitifully, sort of like a bear, if you didn’t look closely, but like a hero if you did. One of his eyes had been gouged out and hung alongside his nose like a shiny marble. Two of his front teeth were missing and blood dripped from his steely chin.

A soldier with a first-aid kit rushed up to keep him from falling. “Commander Shangguan, this man is badly wounded!” she shouted, her slight frame bent over by the weight of his body.

At that moment, Pandi, with all her bulk, came running over ahead of two porters with a stretcher. A tiny army cap sat atop her head, the brim sticking out above her broad, full face; only her ears, which poked out from under her pageboy, retained the delicate beauty of a Shangguan girl.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she jerked Platoon Leader Ma’s eye loose and tossed it away; it rolled around on the muddy ground for a moment before coming to rest and staring up at us hostilely. “Commander Shangguan,” Platoon Leader Ma said as he sat up on the stretcher and pointed at Mother. “Tell Battalion Commander Lu that this old lady broke down the gate…”

Pandi wrapped Platoon Leader Ma’s face in gauze, round and round until he couldn’t open his mouth. Then she stood in front of us and called out to Mother tentatively.

“I’m not your mother.”

“I told you once,” Pandi said, “that the river flows east for ten years and west the next ten. Look at the mud on your feet when you step out of the water.”

“I’ve seen it,” Mother said. “I’ve seen it all.”

Pandi said, “I know everything that’s happened in the family. You took good care of my daughter, Mother, so I absolve you of all guilt.”

“I don’t need your absolution. I’ve lived long enough.”

“We’ve taken back our land, all of it,” Pandi said.

Mother gazed up at the scattered clouds in the sky and muttered, “Lord, open Thine eyes and take a look at this world…”

Pandi walked up and, with no show of emotion, rubbed my head. I could smell the disagreeable odor of medicine on her hand. She didn’t rub Sima Liang’s head, and I assumed he wouldn’t have allowed her to. He was grinding his feral little teeth, and if she’d tried to rub his head, he’d probably have bitten her finger off. She smiled sarcastically as she turned to Sixth Sister. “You’ve done well. The American imperialists are supplying our enemies with airplanes and artillery. They’re helping our enemies slaughter people in the liberated areas.”

With her arms wrapped around Babbitt, Sixth Sister said, “Let us go, Fifth Sister. You’ve already killed Second Sister. Is it our turn next?”

At that moment, Sima Ku dragged the body of Zhaodi out of the mill house, laughing hysterically. Moments earlier, when his soldiers had made their mad dash out of the building, he had stayed behind. Known for his meticulous dress, the buttons of his tunic always clean and shiny, Sima Ku had changed overnight. His face was like a bean that had swelled up in the rain and then baked dry in the sun, crisscrossed with white wrinkles. His eyes were lifeless, the hair on his large head spotted with gray. He dragged Second Sister’s bloodless body up to Mother and fell to his knees.

Mother’s mouth was twisted to one side, her cheekbones jerking up and down so violently she couldn’t utter a single intelligible comment. Tears filled her eyes. She reached out to touch Second Sister’s forehead, then cupped her daughter’s chin in her hand and managed to say, “Zhaodi, my little girl, you and your sisters chose the men you went with and the paths you took. You wouldn’t listen to your mother, so I couldn’t save you. All of you… trusted to fate…”

Sima Ku let go of Second Sister’s corpse and walked toward Lu Liren, who was surrounded by a dozen or more bodyguards as he walked toward the mill house. He stopped when he was a couple of paces from the other man. Two pairs of eyes were locked, seemingly in mortal combat, sparks flying, as if from crossed swords. No victor emerged after several rounds. Three dry laughs emerged from Lu Liren’s mouth: “Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha!” They were met with three from Sima Ku: “Heh heh! Heh heh! Heh heh heh!”

“I trust you’ve been well since we last met, Brother Sima,” Lu said. “It was a year ago that you drove me from the area. I’ll bet you never imagined the same fate would befall you one day!”

“A six-month debt is quickly repaid,” Sima said. “But Brother Lu, you’ve demanded too much interest.”

“I am deeply pained over the tragic loss of your wife. But that is the nature of revolutions. When cutting out a tumor, some good cells must be sacrificed. But that cannot stop us from cutting out the tumor. I hope this is something you can understand.”

“Don’t waste your spittle,” Sima Ku said. “You may kill me now!”

“Nothing so simple is planned for you.”

“Then you’ll forgive me if I take matters into my own hands.”

He reached in and pulled out a silver-plated pistol, cocked the hammer, and turned to Mother. “I’m doing this to avenge your loss,” he said as he put the pistol to his head.

Lu Liren roared with laughter. “So you’re a coward, after all! Go ahead, kill yourself, you pathetic worm!”

Sima Ku’s hand began to shake.

“Daddy!” It was Sima Liang.

Sima Ku turned to look at his son. Slowly his hand dropped to his side. He let out a self-mocking laugh and handed the pistol to Lu Liren. “Here, you take this.”

Lu Liren took the pistol and hefted it in his hand. “This is a woman’s toy,” he said as he flipped it disdainfully to one of the men behind him, and then stomped his water-soaked, muddy feet on the ground. “Actually, once you handed over the weapon, your fate was no longer in my hands. My superiors will choose where you wind up – in Heaven or in Hell.”

With a shake of his head, Sima Ku said, “I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong, Commander Lu. There is no seat reserved for me in either Heaven or Hell. My seat exists between those two places, and when it’s all over and done with, you will be in the same boat as me.”

Lu Liren turned to the men beside him. “Take them away.”

Guards moved up, nudged Sima Ku and Babbitt with their rifles, and said, “Get moving!”

“Let’s go,” Sima Ku said to Babbitt. “They can kill me a hundred times, but they won’t touch a hair on your head.”

Still holding Sixth Sister up, Babbitt walked up to Sima Ku.

“Mrs. Babbitt can stay behind,” Lu Liren said.

“Commander Lu,” Sixth Sister said, “I ask you to spare the two of us as a reward for helping Mother raise Lu Shengli.”

Pushing up his glasses, with their broken rim, he said to Mother, “You talk some sense into her.”

Mother shook her head and sat down on her haunches. “Give me a hand, children,” she said to Sima Liang and me.

So Sima Liang and I hoisted Zhaodi’s body up on Mother’s back.

With her daughter on her back, Mother headed down the muddy road home, barefoot, with Sima Liang and me beside her, each holding up one of Zhaodi’s stiffening legs to ease Mother’s burden. The deep footprints she made in the muddy road with her crippled, once-bound feet were still discernible months later.

6

The Flood Dragon River had reached flood stage; by looking out the window from my bed, I could see murky yellow water roaring along at the crest of the dike. A detachment of soldiers stood atop the dike gazing at the river as they engaged in a loud discussion.

Out in the yard Mother was making flatcakes on a griddle, while Zaohua kept the fire going. Because the firewood was still wet, the flames burned dark yellow and filled the air with dense black smoke. The sun’s rays were muted.

Sima Liang came inside, bringing with him the acrid smell of scholar tree. “They’re planning to take my dad plus Sixth Aunt and her husband back to military headquarters,” he said in a low voice. “Third Aunt’s husband and the others are making a raft to sail downriver.”

“Liang,” Mother called out from outside. “Go down to the river with your uncle and aunt and keep the others there. Tell them I want to see them off.”

The river flowed fast and dirty, carrying grain stalks, yam vines, dead animals, even – out in the deepest part – entire uprooted trees. The Flood Dragon River Bridge, three pylons of which Sima Ku had burned down, had disappeared under the raging water, its existence signaled only by swirling eddies and the loud crashing of waves. Scrub brush on both sides of the river had also disappeared, though every once in a while a branch poked through the surface, green leaves still attached. Gray-blue gulls skimmed the tips of waves, from time to time coming up with a small fish. The opposite bank looked like a black rope that kept popping in and out of view, dancing atop sprays of glistening water. No more than a few inches kept the river from swamping the dikes; in some spots, yellow tongues of water lapped seductively at the crests, formed eddies, and slithered over the outer edges.

When we reached the riverbank, Speechless Sun was holding his impressive organ in his hand and pissing into the water, the whiskey-colored liquid making bell-like sounds when it hit the surface. He smiled when he saw us, took out a whistle he’d fashioned from a cartridge, and entertained us with birdcalls: the throaty call of the thrush, the shallow moan of the oriole, and the sad wail of the lark. It was enchanting; even his warty face softened. After running through his repertoire, he flicked the saliva out of his whistle and, with a guttural gr-ao, thrust it toward me, obviously intending it as a gift. But I backed up fearfully and just looked at him. Speechless Sun, you demon, I’ll never forget the look on your face when you were cutting down people with your sword! Again he reached out toward me, followed by another gr-ao, as a look of agitation spread across his face. I backed up. He came toward me. Sima Liang, who was standing behind me, said in softly, “Don’t take it, Little Uncle. ‘The whistling mute, confronted by a brute.’ He uses that thing to call ghosts in the cemetery.” Gr-ao! Beginning to get angry, Speechless Sun forced the brass object into my hand, before turning and walking over to a group of men who were making wooden rafts, ignoring us altogether. Sima Liang dug the whistle out of my hand and examined it carefully in the sunlight, as if expecting to have some secret revealed. “Little Uncle,” he said, “I was born under the sign of the cat, not one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, so no ghost is a match for me. I’ll hold on to this for you.” He put the whistle into one of the many hidden pockets in his knee-length, liberally patched pants. A great many strange and interesting objects filled those pockets: a stone that changed color in the moonlight, a little saw used for cutting roof tiles, apricot pits in a variety of shapes, even a pair of sparrow talons and the skulls of two frogs. He also carried baby teeth – his, Eighth Sister’s, and mine – which Mother had thrown into the yard behind the house; he’d retrieved every one of them, which was no mean feat, considering all the dog shit hidden in the tall weeds. But he said, “If you really want to find something, it’ll jump right out of its hiding place.” Now to the hidden treasures in his pants was added a demonic little whistle.

Like a column of ants, more than a dozen 16th Regiment soldiers were carrying pine logs down one of the lanes to the riverbank.

Crashl Bangi Sima Ting’s watchtower was under siege. Speechless Sun led the assault, directing his men to take down the posts and fasten them together with thick wire. Zunlong the Elder, the village’s handiest carpenter, was their technical supervisor. The mute was screaming at him like a wrathful gorilla, spittle flying everywhere. Zunlong stood at attention, arms at his sides, a clamp in one hand and a hatchet in the other. His scarred knees were pressed together; his calves, with their protruding veins, were straight and rigid; he was wearing wooden clogs.

At that moment, a guard with a rifle slung over his back came riding down the lane on a bicycle. After parking his bike, he scrambled up the dike; halfway there, one of his feet sank into a rat hole, and when he pulled it out, murky water seeped to the surface. “Look,” Sima Liang said, “the dike’s about to go.” The soldier echoed his concern. “Look out!” he shouted. “There’s a hole here.” Panic-stricken soldiers stopped what they were doing and stared fearfully at the watery hole. A rare look of terror even appeared on the mute’s face as he gazed out at the raging river, where the water flowed higher than the tallest building in the village. Taking out his sword and tossing it to the top of the dike, he stripped off his shirt and pants, until he was standing there dressed only in a pair of shorts that looked as if they were made of sheet metal. He turned to his men and grunted. Like a flock of startled woodcocks, they just gaped at him. Finally, one bushy-browed soldier shouted, “What do you want us to do? Jump into the river?” The mute ran up and grabbed him by the collar, pulling so hard that several black plastic buttons snapped off. In his excitement, the mute spat out a word – Strip! – everyone heard it.

Zunlong looked at the hole and at the eddies in the river. “You there, soldiers,” he said, “it’s a gopher hole, which means it widens out below. Your commander wants you to strip so you can go down and plug the holes. Go on, men, strip. If you don’t do it now, it’ll be too late.”

Zunlong took off his patched jacket and threw it at the mute’s feet. Taking their cue from him, the soldiers began to strip. One youngster merely took off his jacket, leaving his pants on. The mute, getting angrier by the minute, repeated his command: “Strip! Strip! Strip!” When cornered, dogs jump over walls, cats climb trees, rabbits bite, and mutes speak. Over and over he bellowed. “Commander,” the young soldier stammered, “I’m not wearing undershorts!” The mute picked up his sword and laid the back of the blade across the soldier’s neck, thumping it twice. The poor soldier paled and blubbered, “I’ll strip, Grandpa Mute, how’s that?” He bent down, untied his leggings, and took off his pants, revealing his lily-white backside and a nearly hairless prick, which he quickly covered with his hands. The mute turned to have the guard strip also, but the man ran down the dike, jumped on his bicycle, rocked back and forth a time or two, and sped away, shouting as he went, “The dike’s about to go – the dike’s about to go!”

While Zunlong knocked down a bean trellis at the foot of the dike and made a large ball out of the vines and pieces of lath, the mute put his clothes in a pile and tied them up with his leggings. Several soldiers helped him roll the bundle up to the top of the dike, where the mute picked it up and was about to jump into the river, when Zunlong pointed to a whirlpool. So he went over to his toolbox, took out a flat green bottle, and removed the cork. The smell of alcohol rose into the air. The mute took the bottle, tipped his head back, and poured the contents down his throat. With a thumbs-up, he waved at Zunlong and shouted, “Strip!” which everyone knew meant “good.” Bundle in hand, he dove into the river, whose waters had already breached the dike. By then the gopher hole was the size of a horse’s neck, releasing gushing water that snaked its way down the lane and turned into a fullblown stream of murky water that quickly reached our door. Our houses looked like miniature sand castles alongside the raging river. The mute disappeared in the river, the spot marked by bubbles and clumps of grass. Gulls skimmed the surface, their beady black eyes fixed with nervous anticipation on the spot where the mute had gone into the water. I could make out their bright red beaks and the black talons tucked under their bellies. With growing anxiety, we kept our eyes glued to the water as a glistening dark watermelon rolled once and was swallowed up. It resurfaced a few feet downriver. Then a scrawny black frog struggled to swim toward us from the middle of the muddy river, fighting the current. When it reached the relatively calm water near the bank, I could see the little wakes made by its scissoring legs. The soldiers, nervous looks frozen on their taut faces, stretched their necks to see what was happening. They looked like a line of condemned men awaiting the executioner’s sword. The one who’d been forced to strip naked kept the family jewels hidden behind his hands as he too craned his neck to look. Zunlong, on the other hand, was staring at the hole in the dike. Seeing that no one was paying attention, Sima Liang picked up the mute’s sword, a weapon that killed men as easily as slicing a melon, and furtively ran his thumb along the blade to test its sharpness.

“Okay!” Zunlong shouted. “The hole’s been plugged!”

The savage gush of water from the hole was now a mere trickle. Like a huge black fish, the mute’s head crashed through the surface, sending the gulls circling above the spot soaring skyward in fright. As he wiped the water from his face with one of his large hands, he spat out a muddy geyser. Zunlong ordered the soldiers to toss the ball of vines out into the river. The mute grabbed it with both hands, pressing it down into the water so he could climb on top, legs and all. He too dipped beneath the surface, but only for a moment; he sucked in a mouthful of air the moment his head reappeared. Zunlong reached out with a long branch to pull him in, but the mute waved him off and dipped back beneath the surface.

In the village the crash of a gong was followed by a bugled charge. Scores of armed soldiers rushed the riverbank from all the neighboring lanes. Lu Liren and his guards emerged from the mouth of our lane. The minute he reached the dike, he shouted, “Where’s the danger?”

The mute’s head popped up, and then quickly disappeared, a sign that he was exhausted. So Zunlong reached out again with his branch and pulled the mute to the river’s edge, where soldiers dragged him up onto dry land. Rubber-legged, he sat on the bank.

“Commander,” Zunlong said to Lu Liren, “if not for this man, the villagers would probably be feeding the turtles by now.”

Lu walked up to the mute and gave him a thumbs-up. His skin a mass of goose bumps and his face covered with mud, the mute just smiled.

Lu Liren’s men turned to shoring up the dike. Meanwhile, work on the rafts continued, since the prisoners had to be ferried across the river by noon, where they were to be met by escorts from headquarters. The soldiers who had shed their uniforms were relieved. The more praise that was heaped upon them, the more energetic they became, and they asked to stay to complete their mission, with or without uniforms. So Lu Liren had someone run back to camp to fetch a pair of pants for the little bare-assed soldier. He smiled at the youngster and said, “Why be embarrassed just because you’ve got a hairless little pecker?” While he was giving orders, Lu turned to me and asked, “How’s your mother? Shengli must be quite a handful.” Sima Liang nudged me, but I didn’t know what he wanted. So he spoke up: “Granny wants to come to see my father off and would like you to wait for her.”

Meanwhile, Zunlong had thrown himself into his work, and within half an hour had built a raft several meters long. Since they had no oars, he recommended that they use wooden spades. Lu Liren gave the order. Then he replied to Sima Liang, “Go tell your granny that I’ve granted her request.” He looked at his watch. “You two can leave now.” But we didn’t, because when we looked toward the house, we saw Mother walk out the door with a bamboo basket covered by a piece of white cloth over one arm and carrying a red earthenware teapot in her other hand. Zaohua walked out after her, a bunch of green scallions in her arms. Behind her came Sima Ku’s twin daughters, Sima Feng and Sima Huang; they were followed by the twin sons of the mute and Third Sister, Big Mute and Little Mute. Then came Lu Shengli, who had just learned to walk. Bringing up the rear was Shangguan Laidi, her face heavily powdered. The procession moved slowly. The twin girls kept looking at the bean vines and the morning glories growing among them, hoping to see dragonflies, butterflies, or cicada shells. The twin boys kept looking at trees lining the lane – scholar trees, willow trees, and mulberry trees, with their light yellow bark; they were looking for delectable snails. Lu Shengli kept her eyes peeled for puddles, and whenever she spotted one, she stomped down in the water and filled the lane with gales of innocent laughter. Laidi was walking like a proper young lady, but I was so far away I could see only her powdered face, not her features.

Lu Liren took a pair of binoculars from the neck of one of his guards and looked across the river. A soldier beside him asked with a sense of urgency, “Are they here?”

“No,” he said without looking away. “Not a trace of them. All I see is a crow pecking at a pile of horse dung.”

“Could something have happened to them?” the guard asked anxiously.

“I don’t think so. They’re all marksmen, and no one would dare try to stop them.”

Suddenly, a group of dark-skinned men stood on the opposite dike; the sun’s shifting reflection on the surface created the illusion that they were standing on the water, not the dike. “There they are,” Lu Liren said. “Have the signalmen let them know we’re here.”

A young soldier stepped up, raised a short, stubby, strange-looking pistol, and fired it into the air. A yellow ball arced into the sky, froze there for a moment, and then fell in a sweeping curve, leaving a trail of white smoke and a sizzling sound before falling into the river. As it fell, some gulls were tempted to go after it, but a closer look sent them fleeing with shrill cries.

“Give another signal,” Lu Liren said, when there was no response.

This time the soldier took out a red banner, tied it to the end of the branch Zunlong had discarded, and waved it in the air; the men on the other bank roared their approval.

“Good,” Lu Liren said as he draped the binoculars around his neck. He turned to the young officer who had spoken with him a moment before. “Staff Officer Qian, run back and tell Chief of Staff Du to bring the prisoners, on the double.” Staff Officer Du turned and ran down the dike.

Lu Liren jumped onto the raft and stomped on it to see how sturdy it was. “It won’t break up out on the river, will it?” he asked Zunlong.

“Don’t you worry, sir. Back in the autumn of 1921, the villagers ferried Senator Zhao across the river. I made the raft they used.”

“These are important prisoners,” Lu Liren said. “There can be no mistakes.”

“Don’t you worry, sir. If there are, you can cut off nine of my ten fingers.”

“What good would that do? If the worst happened, even taking nine of my fingers would serve no purpose.”

Mother led her procession up the dike, where she was met by Lu Liren. “Aunt,” he said politely, “wait here for the time being. They’re being brought over now.” He bent down to put his face up close to Lu Shengli. Frightened, she started to cry, embarrassing Lu, who straightened his eyeglasses and said, “She doesn’t even know her own daddy.” “Fifth Son-in-law,” Mother said with a sigh. “All this fighting, back and forth, when’s it going to end?” Lu had an answer ready. “Don’t worry, in two or, at the most, three years, you’ll have the peaceful life you’re looking for.” Mother said, “I’m just a woman, and I ought to keep my thoughts to myself, but can’t you find it in you to let them go? After all, you and they are part of the same family.” “Dear Mother-in-law,” Lu said with a smile, “that’s not for me to decide. But how did you wind up with so many troublesome sons-in-law?” He laughed, a mirthful sound that lightened the mood on the dike. “Can’t you ask your superiors to grant clemency?” “Please, Mother-in-law, don’t trouble yourself over things like this.”

A detachment of guards came down the lane escorting Sima Ku, Babbitt, and Niandi. Sima Ku’s hands were tied behind his back with rope; Babbitt’s were tied in front of him; Niandi’s were free. When they passed by our house, Sima Ku walked up to the door. A guard blocked his way. Sima Ku spat at him and shouted, “Get out of my way, I’m going in to say good-bye to my family.” Cupping his hands in front of his mouth, Lu Liren trumpeted down the lane, “Commander Sima, there’s no need for that. They’re all right here.” As if he hadn’t heard, Sima hunched his shoulders and, followed by Babbitt and Niandi, forced his way into the yard, where the three of them dawdled a while. Lu Liren kept looking at his watch, as the escort troops on the other side of the river waved a red banner back and forth. The signalman on this side waved his in response.

Finally, Sima Ku and his companions walked out of the yard and made their way up the dike. “Ready the raft!” Lu Liren ordered. A dozen or so soldiers responded by pushing the raft out into the roiling river. It bobbed to the surface and was turned parallel to the bank by the current. The soldiers held tightly to the rope handles to keep it from setting off downriver.

“Commander Sima, Mr. Babbitt,” Lu Liren said, “we’re a benevolent army. Humanity is our guiding principle, which is why I’ve permitted your family to see you off. Please be quick about it.”

Sima Ku, Babbitt, and Niandi walked over to where we were standing. Sima was smiling; Babbitt looked worried. Niandi was in a somber mood, looking like a martyr, unafraid to die. “Sixth Sister,” Lu Liren said softly, “you may stay behind.” But Niandi shook her head, determined to follow her husband.

Mother took the cloth covering off of her basket, and Zaohua handed her a peeled scallion, which she broke in half and stuffed into a flatcake. Then she took a jar of bean paste from her basket and handed it to Sima Liang. “Hold it,” she said. He took it and stood there staring at her. “Don’t stare at me,” she said, “look at your father.” Sima Liang’s gaze flew over to the face of Sima Ku, who looked down at his husky, dark-skinned son. A cloud of worry had settled on his face, something we hardly ever saw. His shoulder twitched. Was he going to reach down to touch his son? Sima Liang’s lips parted. “Dad,” he said softly. Sima Ku’s yellow eyes seemed to spin; he forced back tears and swallowed them. “Don’t forget, son,” he said, “that no member of the Sima family has ever died in bed. I don’t expect you to, either.” “Dad, are they going to shoot you?” Sima Ku gazed at the murky river out of the corner of his eye. “Your father failed because he was too soft, too kind. So don’t you forget that if you’re going to be a bad man, you must kill without mercy, and if you’re going to be a good man, you’ll always have to walk with your head bowed to keep from stepping on ants. The one thing you must never become is a bat, neither bird nor beast. Can you remember that?” Biting his lip, Sima Liang nodded.

Mother handed a scallion-stuffed flatcake to Laidi, who merely stared back at her. “Feed it to him!” Blushing shyly, Laidi had obviously forgotten her mad passion of three days before; the shy look on her face proved that. Mother looked first at her, then at Sima Ku. Her eyes were like a golden thread that drew Laidi and Sima Ku’s gaze together. Their looks spoke volumes. Laidi took off her black robe, under which she was wearing a purple jacket, purple-bordered pants, and purple cloth slippers. Her figure was graceful, her face thin and lovely. Sima Ku had harnessed her passion, but in doing so had created in her a sense of lovesickness. She was still a beautiful woman, well versed in coquettish-ness, an attractive widow. As he stared at her, he said, “Take good care of yourself.” Laidi responded with a strange comment: “You’re a diamond, he’s a piece of rotten wood.” She walked up to him, dipped the scallion-stuffed flatcake into the yellow paste Sima Liang was holding, and twisted it neatly in the air to keep the paste from dripping to the ground. She then held it up to Sima Ku’s mouth. He threw back his head and then lowered it to take a savage bite of the flatcake, which he chewed with difficulty, making loud crunching noises. His cheeks swelled; a pair of large tears seeped from his eyes. He stretched his neck to swallow, sniffled loudly, and said, “Those scallions have a real bite!”

Mother handed me one of the flatcakes and another to Eighth Sister. “Jintong,” she said, “feed it to Sixth Brother-in-law. Yunii, feed yours to Sixth Sister.” As Laidi had done before me, I dipped the cake in the yellow paste and put it up next to Babbitt’s mouth. His twisted lips parted as he bit off a tiny piece. Tears ran from his blue eyes. He bent down, placed his dirty lips on my forehead, and kissed me loudly. Then he walked over to Mother; I thought he was going to hug her, but since his hands were tied, all he could do was bend down and touch his lips to her forehead like a goat nibbling a tree. ‘Til never forget you, Mama,” he said.

Eighth Sister groped her way over to Sima Liang, reached out and dipped her flatcake in the bean paste, with Sima Liang’s help. Holding it up in two hands, she raised her face. Her forehead looked like a crab’s shell, her eyes were two deep, dark wells, her nose was straight and her mouth was wide, with tender lips like rose petals. My eighth sister, whom I’d always taken advantage of, was truly a pitiful little lamb. “Sixth Sister,” she chirped, “Sixth Sister, this is for you.”

As tears filled her eyes, Sixth Sister picked up Eighth Sister. “My poor, ill-fated little sister,” she sobbed.

Sima Ku finished his flatcake.

All this time, Lu Liren was gazing at the river out of the corner of his eye. Now he turned and said, “It’s time to board the raft.”

“Not yet,” Sima Ku said. “I’m still hungry. In olden days, when the court was about to execute a criminal, they made sure he’d eaten his fill first. You people of the 16th Regiment call yourselves a benevolent army, so the least you can do is allow me to fill up on scallion-stuffed flatcakes, especially since our mother-in-law made them with her own hands.”

Lu Liren looked at his watch. “All right,” he said, “go ahead and stuff yourself while we ferry Babbitt across the river.”

The mute and six of his soldiers picked up their wooden spades and jumped gingerly onto the raft, which rocked in the water and twisted to one side as the waterline dipped below the surface and sheets of water spilled over the sides. Two soldiers with loosened leggings leaned back to bring the raft under control. Lu Liren was worried. “Old-timer,” he said to Zunlong, “will it take two more?” “No, have two of the men with oars get off.” “Baldy Han, Pan Yongwang, you two come back.” Holding their wooden spades, they jumped off the raft, which rocked so severely that some of the soldiers nearly fell into the river. The mute, clad only in his underwear, growled, “Strip! Strip! Strip!” After that day, no one ever heard another Gr-ao from him again.

“Okay?” Lu Liren asked Zunlong. “Yes,” he said as he took the spade out of one of the soldier’s hands. “Yours is a benevolent army, and you’ve earned my respect. In the tenth year of the Republic I ferried a senator across the river. If you won’t take offense, I’d be honored to serve you, even as a pack animal.”

“Old man,” Lu Liren said, clearly touched, “that’s what I had in mind, but was too embarrassed to ask. With you at the helm, I know this raft is in good hands. Who’s got liquor?”

An orderly ran up and handed Lu Liren a dented metal canteen. He unscrewed the top and held the canteen up to his nose. “Authentic sorghum liquor,” he said. “Old man, I offer you a drink on behalf of my superiors.” He handed the canteen to Zunlong with both hands. Stirred by this honor, Zunlong rubbed some of the mud off his hands before accepting the canteen and taking ten or more deep swallows before handing it back to Lu Liren. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as a redness moved from his face down to his neck, and from there to his chest. “I’ve drunk your liquor, sir, which links our hearts together.” With a smile, Lu Liren said, “Why stop at our hearts? Our livers are linked, and our lungs, even our intestines.” Tears seemed to spurt from Zunlong’s eyes as he leaped onto the raft, getting an immediate foothold at the rear. The raft rocked ever so slightly; Lu Liren nodded his approval, before walking up to Babbitt, looking down at his bound hands, and smiling apologetically. “I know this is hard on you, Mr. Babbitt. Commander Yu and Director Song asked for you by name, so you can expect courteous treatment.” Babbitt raised his hands. “Is this what you call courteous treatment?” “In a way it is,” Lu Liren said calmly, “and I hope you’ll let it go at that. Now it’s time to go.”

Babbitt looked over at us, saying good-bye with his eyes before turning and jumping onto the raft. This time it rocked heavily, and he swayed with it. Zunlong reached out to steady him from behind with his spade.

Following Babbitt’s lead, Niandi bent down and kissed me clumsily on the forehead, then did the same to Eighth Sister, running her thin fingers through Eighth Sister’s soft, flax-colored hair. “My poor little sister,” she said with a sigh. “I hope the old man above has a good life planned for you.” She then nodded to Mother and the children lined up behind her, and turned to board the raft. “Sixth Sister, there’s no need for you to go,” Lu Liren reminded her, to which she responded mildly, “Fifth Brother-in-law, there’s a popular saying that a steelyard’s sliding weight doesn’t leave its arm, and a good man doesn’t leave his wife. You and Fifth Sister were inseparable, weren’t you?” “I just want what’s best for you,” Lu Liren said. “So Fll do as you wish. You may board the raft.”

Two of his guards picked up Niandi by the arms and placed her on the raft. Babbitt reached out to steady her.

The raft was sitting low and uneven in the water; parts were completely submerged, others were an inch or so above the surface. Zunlong said to Lu Liren, “Commander Lu, it’s best if my guests are seated. That goes for the men with the oars too.” So Lu Liren gave the order: “Sit down, all of you. Mr. Babbitt, for your own safety, please sit down.”

Babbitt sat down on the raft – more accurately, he sat down in the water. Niandi sat down across from him, also in the water.

The mute and five of his soldiers sat down, three on each side of the raft. Zunlong was the only person standing, feet planted firmly at the rear of the raft.

The little red flag continued to wave on the opposite bank. “Send a signal,” Lu Liren said to the signalman, “so they’ll be ready to receive the prisoners.”

The man took out his stubby pistol and fired three flares into the sky above the opposite bank, where the red flag stopped waving and a bunch of little black men began running around on the silvery surface of the river.

Lu Liren looked at his watch. “Launch the raft!”

The two soldiers loosened their grip on the ropes, as Zunlong pushed off with his spade and the soldiers began swishing their spades in the water. The raft eased out into the river and quickly turned sideways as the current dragged it downriver. As if flying a kite, the two soldiers on the dike fed out as much of the ropes as they could.

On the opposite bank the men stared anxiously at the raft. Lu Liren took off his glasses and gave them a quick wipe with his sleeve; he had a faraway look in his eyes, which were circled with white rims, like one of those birds that feed on loaches. He draped the cords that served as shafts for his eyeglasses over his ears, which had already been rubbed raw. Out on the river, the raft turned sideways; lacking experience in raft navigation, the soldiers wielded their spades this way and that, sending murky water splashing onto the raft and soaking the clothing of everybody aboard. Babbitt, his hands still bound, cried out fearfully; Sixth Sister held on to him for dear life. From where he stood at the rear, Zunlong shouted, “Easy there, men, easy. Stop flailing like that, work together, that’s the key!” Lu Liren fired a couple of shots in the air, and the soldiers’ heads jerked up. “Follow Zunlong’s cadence, work together!” Zunlong said. “Easy there, men, on my count: one-two, one-two, one-two, nice and easy, one-two

The raft eased out into the middle of the river and spurted downstream. Babbitt and Sixth Sister let the waves wash over them. The two soldiers holding the ropes shouted, “Commander, there’s no more rope to let out!” By then, the raft was a good hundred yards downstream, and the rope was taut as a wire. The soldiers wrapped the ends around their arms; the ropes bit deeply into their flesh. They were leaning so far backward they were nearly lying down, and their heels began to slip in the mud; they were suddenly in danger of being dragged down into the water. They screamed as the raft began to tip to one side. “Hurry up, start running!” Lu Liren shouted. “Run, I said, you bastards!” Stumbling at first, the two soldiers took off running, as the men at the foot of the dike scrambled to get out of the way. A bit of slack opened up, and the raft recommenced its rapid descent downstream. Zunlong kept shouting his cadence, as the soldiers on the sides bent at the waist and rowed with all their might, their movements gradually coming together, so that as the raft continued downstream, it also moved closer to the opposite bank.

A moment earlier, when the raft was in danger of tipping over, and all eyes were on the river, Sima Liang had put down his bowl and said softly, “Dad, turn around.” Sima Ku, who was still chewing his flatcake, turned to face the river. Sima Liang ran up behind him, took out a little bone-handled knife – the one Babbitt had given to me – and began cutting the rope that bound his father’s hands, concentrating on the part closest to his body, and not all the way through. While he worked on the rope, Mother prayed loudly, “Dear Lord, show us Thy mercy and see my daughter and son-in-law safely across the river, dear merciful Lord.” I heard Sima Liang whisper, “You can break the rope now, Dad.” He then turned, quickly slipped the knife back into his pocket, and picked the bowl up again. Laidi continued feeding Sima Ku. Meanwhile, the raft, which was now several hundred yards downstream, eased up to the opposite bank.

Lu Liren walked over and glanced scornfully at Sima Ku. “You’ve got quite an appetite.”

Sima Ku muttered as he chewed, “My mother-in-law made them with her own hands and my sister-in-law is feeding me, so why wouldn’t I eat? I’ll never have another chance to eat this much food and in this manner again. How about some paste?”

Laidi squeezed the tip of the scallion out beyond the edge of the flatcake and dipped it in the bowl of paste Sima Liang was holding, then held it up to Sima Ku’s mouth. He took an exaggerated bite and chewed hungrily.

Lu Liren shook his head scornfully and walked over to where we were standing. Mother picked up Shengli and held her in his arms. The baby cried and fought to get free; Lu Liren backed up awkwardly. “Brother Sima,” he said, “I envy you, but I can’t be like you.”

Sima Ku swallowed the food in his mouth. “That’s an insult, Commander Lu. You’re the victor, which makes you king. You’re the cleaver and I’m the meat. You can slice me up or chop me to pieces, and still you mock me.”

“I’m not mocking you,” Lu Liren said. “The truth is, when you get to headquarters, you’ll have a chance to atone for your crimes. But if resistance is all you can manage, I’m afraid you won’t like the outcome.”

“I’ve lived a good life, with plenty of good food and good times, and I’m ready to die. But I’ll have to leave my children in your hands.”

“You can rest easy on that score,” Lu Liren said. “If not for the war, you and I would be proper relatives.”

“You’re an intellectual,” Sima Ku said, “and what you say sounds almost sacred. But being relatives like that can only come from sleeping with certain women.” He laughed, yet I noticed that his arms didn’t move.

The soldiers holding the ropes returned. On the opposite bank, the oarsmen-soldiers and the prisoner escorts were hauling the raft back upstream. After they’d gone some distance, they began rowing back toward us. This time they made good speed, now that they’d had practice, and were better coordinated with the two soldiers on this side. They sped across the river.

“Brother Sima,” Lu Liren said, “mealtime’s almost over.”

Sima Ku belched. “That’s enough for me. Thanks, Mother-in-law. You too, Sister-in-law and Yunii. Son, you’ve been holding that bowl all this time. Thank you. Feng, Huang, be sure to listen to your grandmother and aunt. In a pinch, go look up Fifth Aunt. Everything’s going her way these days, while your father has fallen on hard times.

Little Uncle, grow up good and strong. You were your second sister’s favorite. She often said that Jintong is going to be someone special someday, so show us she was right.”

My nose began to ache out of sadness.

The raft nudged up to the bank; the head of the prisoner escort team, a confident-looking man, was seated in the middle. He jumped ashore and saluted Lu Liren, who returned the salute. They shook hands like old friends.

“Old Lu,” the man said, “you fought well. Commander Yu is delighted, and Commissar Song knows all about it.” He took a letter out of the leather pouch at his belt and handed it to Lu Liren, who took it and tossed a silver pistol into the man’s pouch. “Here’s a war trophy for little Lan.” “I thank you for her,” the man said. Lu Liren then said, “Hand it over.” The man froze. “Hand what over?” “The receipt for the prisoners.” The man fished around in his pouch for pen and paper and wrote out a hurried receipt, which he handed to Lu. “You’re very meticulous,” he said. Lu Liren laughed. “No matter how clever the trickster monkey is, he can’t outwit the Buddha.” “Then I must be the trickster monkey,” the man said. “No, I am,” Lu replied. They slapped hands and laughed. Then the man said softly, “Old Lu, I hear you got your hands on a movie projector. Headquarters knows about that too.” “You folks have long ears,” Lu said. “When you go back, tell your superiors we’ll send it over with a projectionist once the flood-waters subside.”

“Damn,” Sima Ku said under his breath. “The tiger kills the prey just so the bear can eat.”

“What did you say?” the escort officer asked, clearly displeased.

“Nothing.”

“If I’m not mistaken, you’ll be the famous Sima Ku.” “In person,” Sima said.

“Well, Commander Sima,” the man said, “we’ll take good care of you as long as you cooperate. The last thing we want is to carry your corpse back.”

With a laugh, Sima said, “I wouldn’t dare do anything. You escorts are crack shots, and I’m not about to present myself as a human target.”

“That’s what I’d expect you to say. Okay, then, Commander Lu, that’ll do it. After you, Commander Sima.” Sima Ku boarded the raft and sat down.

The leader of the escort team shook hands with Lu Liren again, turned, and jumped aboard. He sat at the rear, facing Sima Ku, his hand resting on his holstered pistol. “You don’t have to be that cautious,” Sima said. “My hands are tied, so if I jumped overboard, I’d drown. Sit up closer so you can help out if the raft starts to rock.”

Ignoring Sima, in a soft voice the man said to the soldiers manning the oars, “Start rowing, and make it quick.”

All the members of our family stood together on the bank, knowing something the others didn’t know. We waited to see what would happen.

The raft eased out into the river and floated off. The two soldiers sped across the dike, gradually letting out the ropes wrapped around their arms. When the raft reached the middle of the river, it picked up speed, sending waves toward the banks. Zunlong, slightly hoarse by now, called out the cadence, as the soldiers bent to their oars. Gulls followed the raft, flying low. Where the water flowed the fastest, the raft began to rock violently, and Zunlong flipped over backward, right into the river. The leader of the escort team jumped fearfully to his feet and was about to draw his pistol when Sima Ku, having snapped his bindings to free his hands, threw himself at the man like a hungry tiger, sending both of them into the raging water. The mute and the other oarsmen panicked. One by one, they too fell into the river. The soldiers on the dike let go of their ropes, freeing the raft, which went sailing downstream like a big, black fish, tossed by the waves.

All this seemed to occur simultaneously, and by the time Lu Liren and his soldiers realized what had happened, there was no one left to man the raft.

“Shoot him!” Lu Liren demanded.

A head popped up out of the murky water every few moments, but the soldiers couldn’t be sure it was Sima Ku, and didn’t dare fire. Altogether nine men were in the water, which meant there was a one-in-nine chance that the exposed head belonged to Sima Ku. Besides, the river was tearing along like a runaway horse, so even if they fired, the odds of hitting their target were slim.

Sima Ku had gotten away. Having grown up on the banks of the Flood Dragon River, he was a practiced swimmer who could stay underwater for five minutes before coming up for air. Besides, all those flatcakes and scallions had given him plenty of energy.

Lu Liren was livid. A cold glint emanated from his dark eyes as his gaze swept past us. Sima Liang, still holding the bowl of bean paste, huddled up against Mother’s legs, pretending to be scared witless. Cradling Shengli in her arms, Mother walked wordlessly down the dike, with the rest of us on her heels.

Several days later, we heard that only the mute and Zunlong had managed to make it back to dry ground. The rest, including the boastful leader of the escort team, simply vanished, and their bodies were never found. But no one doubted that Sima Ku had gotten away safely.

We were, however, more concerned about the fate of Sixth Sister, Niandi, and her American husband, Babbitt. During those days, as the flooded river continued to roar along, Mother went outside every night to pace the yard and sigh, the sound seeming to drown out even the roar of the river. Mother had given birth to eight daughters: Laidi had gone mad, Zhaodi and Lingdi were dead, Xiangdi had gone into prostitution and might as well be dead; Pandi had taken up with Lu Liren and, with bullets constantly flying around her, could die in a minute; Qiudi had been sold to a White Russian, which wasn’t much better than being dead. Only Yunii remained at her side, but, unhappily, she was blind. Maybe her blindness was the only reason she remained at Mother’s side. Now, if something were to happen to Niandi, nearly all the eight young beauties of the Shangguan family would be nothing but a memory. So amid Mother’s sighs, we heard her utter loud prayers:

Old Man in Heaven, Dear Lord, Blessed Virgin Mary, Guanyin Bodhisattva of the Southern Sea, please protect our Niandi and all the children. Place all the heavenly and worldly miseries, pains, and illnesses on my head. So long as my children are well and safe…”

A month later, after the waters had receded, news of Sixth Sister and Babbitt came to us from the opposite bank of the Flood Dragon River: There had been a horrific explosion in a secret cave deep in Da’ze Mountain. Once the dust had settled, people entered the cave and found three bodies huddled together, two women and a man. The man was a young blond foreigner. Although no one was prepared to say that one of the women was our sixth sister, when Mother heard the news, a bitter smile spread across her face. “It’s all my fault,” she said, before breaking into loud wails.

In the late fall, Northeast Gaomi’s most beautiful season, the flood had finally passed. The sorghum fields were so red they seemed black, and reeds, which grew in profusion, were so white they seemed yellow. The early-morning sun lit up the vast fields that were covered by the first frost of the year. Soldiers of the 16th Regiment moved out silently, taking with them their herds of horses and mules; after tramping across the badly damaged footbridge above the Flood Dragon River, they disappeared over the dike on the northern bank, and we saw no more of them.

Once the 16th Regiment had departed, their commander, Lu Liren, took up the newly created posts of Northeast Gaomi county head and commander of the county militia. Pandi was appointed commander of the Dalan Army District, with the mute serving as its district team leader. His first assignment was to remove everything from the Sima mansion – tables, chairs, stools, water vats, jugs, everything – and distribute it among the local villagers. But that very night, everything found its way back to the mansion gate. Next the mute delivered a carved bed frame to our front yard. “I don’t want that,” Mother said. “Take it away!” “Strip! Strip!” the mute said. So Mother turned to Commander Pandi, who was darning socks at the time, and said, “Pandi, get this bed out of here.” “Mother,” Pandi said, “it’s a trend of the times, so don’t fight it.” “Pandi,” Mother said, “Sima Ku is your second brother-in-law. His son and daughter are here in my care. What will he think when he returns one day?” Pandi put down her darning, picked up her rifle, slung it over her back, and ran outside. Sima Liang followed her out the door; when he returned, he said, “Fifth Aunt’s gone to the county government office.” He added that a two-man sedan chair had brought a VIP, with eighteen armed bodyguards, to the office. County Head Lu welcomed him with all the courtesies of a student greeting his mentor. Word had it that he was a famous land reformer, who was reputed to have come up with a slogan in Shandong’s Northern Wei area: “Killing a rich peasant is better than killing a wild rabbit.”

The mute sent men over to take the bed away. Mother sighed in relief.

“Granny,” Sima Liang said, “let’s get away from here. I think something bad is going to happen.”

“Good luck is always good,” Mother said, “and you cannot escape bad luck. Don’t worry, Liang, even if the man above sent Heavenly Generals and Celestial Troops down to Earth, what more could they do to a bunch of widows and orphans?”

The VIP never appeared in public. Two armed sentries stood at the Sima mansion gate, where county officials with rifles slung over their backs shuttled in and out. One day, after taking our goats out to pasture, we met the mute’s district team and several county and military officials on our way home. They were walking down the street with Huang Tianfu, the coffin shop proprietor, Zhao Six, the steamed bun vendor, Xu Bao, who ran the cooking oil extracting mill, single-breasted Jin, who owned the oil shop, and the local academy teacher, Qin Two, in custody. The distressed prisoners walked with hunched shoulders and bent backs. “Men,” Zhao Six said, screwing his neck around, “what are you doing this for? I’ll forget what you owe me for the steamed buns, how’s that?” One of the officers, a man with a Mount Wulian accent and a mouthful of brass-capped teeth, slapped Zhao. “You prick!” he screeched. “Who owes you anything? Where did your money come from?” The prisoners did not dare say another word as they shuffled along with bowed heads.

That night, as a freezing rain fell, a shadowy figure climbed the wall into our yard. “Who’s there?” Mother whispered. The man rushed up and knelt on the path. “Help me, Sister-in-law,” he said. “Is that you, Sima Ting?” “It’s me,” he said. “Help me. They’re going to hold a big assembly tomorrow and put me in front of a firing squad. We’ve been fellow villagers for all these years, and I’m asking you to save my life.” Mother opened the door, and Sima Ting slipped quickly inside. He was trembling in the darkness. “Can I have something to eat? I’m starving!” Mother handed him a flatcake, which he grabbed out of her hand and gobbled down. Mother sighed. “It’s my brother’s fault,” he said. “He and Lu Liren have become mortal enemies, even though we’re all related.” “That’s enough,” Mother said. “I don’t want to hear any more. You can hide out here, but I am, after all, his mother-in-law.”

At last the mysterious VIP showed his face. He was seated in a tent, writing brush in hand. A large inkstone carved with a dragon and a phoenix lay on the table in front of him. He had a pointed chin and a long, narrow nose; he was wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses, behind which his tiny black eyes glistened. His fingers were long, thin, and ghostly pale, like the tentacles of an octopus.

The greater half of the Sima family’s threshing floor was thronged with poor-peasant representatives from Northeast Gaomi Township’s eighteen villages. They were ringed with sentries every four or five paces, members of the county and military district production teams. The VIP’s eighteen bodyguards were lined up on the stage, faces hard as steel, murderous looks in their eyes, like the Eighteen Arhats of legend. Not a sound from the area below the stage, not even the crying of children old enough to know better. Those too young to know better had nipples stuffed in their mouths at the first whimper. We sat around Mother. In contrast with the anxious villagers sitting nearby, she was surprisingly calm, absorbed in strips of hemp lying on her exposed calf, which she twisted into shoe soles. The white strips rustled as they turned on one leg and merged into identical strands of twisted rope on the other. That day a freezing northeast wind brought cold air over from the icy Flood Dragon River and turned the people’s lips purple.

Before the assembly was called to order, a disturbance occurred as the mute and members of the military district team marched Zhao Six and a dozen or so other men up to the edge of the threshing floor. They were bound and wore placards with black lettering over which red Xs had been drawn. When the villagers spotted them, they lowered their heads and said nothing.

People tucked their heads between their legs to keep the VIP from actually seeing their faces as his black eyes swept the crowd. But Mother kept twisting hemp, her eyes never leaving the work in front of her, and I sensed that the sinister gaze rested on her for a long time.

Lu Liren, wearing a red headband, addressed the audience, spittle flying everywhere. He had been suffering migraine headaches, and nothing worked to stop them, although the headband lessened the pain a little. When he was finished, he asked the VIP for instructions. The man slowly got to his feet. “Welcome Comrade Zhang Sheng, who will instruct us on what to do,” Lu Liren said as he began to clap. The villagers sat dumbfounded, wondering what was going on.

The VIP cleared his throat and began to speak, slowly drawing out each and every word. His speech was like a strip of paper dancing in the cold northeast wind, and over the decades that followed, whenever I saw one of those white funeral paper cutouts that are filled with incantations to ward off evil spirits, I was reminded of that speech.

When the speech ended, Lu Liren stepped up and ordered the mute and his men, plus several officers with holstered Mausers, to drag the prisoners up to the stage like a string of pinecones. The men filled the stage and blocked the villagers’ view of the VIP. “Kneel!” Lu Liren commanded. Quick-witted men fell to their knees. Dull-witted ones were kicked to theirs.

Below the stage, people glanced at one another out of the corners of their eyes. A few of the bolder ones stole a glance at the stage, but the sight of all those men kneeling, snot dripping off the tips of their noses, drove their heads back down.

A skinny man in the crowd stood up on shaky legs and announced in a hoarse, quaking voice, “District Commander… I… I have a grievance…”

“Good!” Pandi shouted excitedly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Come up onto the stage!”

The crowd turned to look at the man. It was the one called Sleepyhead. His gray silk robe was ripped and torn; one sleeve hung by a thread, exposing his swarthy shoulder. His hair, once neatly combed and parted, had turned into a crow’s nest. He quaked in the cold wind as he looked around fearfully.

“Come up and speak your piece!” Lu Liren said.

“It’s no big deal,” Sleepyhead said. “I’ll tell you from down here, all right?”

“Come up!” Pandi said. “You’re Zhang Decheng, aren’t you? I recall that your mother was once forced to go around with a basket begging for food. You have suffered bitterly and your hatred is deep. Come up and tell us about it.”

Bowlegged Sleepyhead made his way through the crowd up to the front of the stage, which, made of rammed earth, was a meter or so high. He jumped, but only managed to further dirty his robe. So a soldier bent down, grabbed his arm, and jerked him into the air, his legs curling beneath him as he cried out in pain. The soldier deposited him on the stage; he landed on unsteady legs, which swayed as if he were standing on springs until he was finally able to steady himself. Raising his head, he looked out over the crowd below and was startled by gazes that hid countless emotions. His knees knocked as he bashfully stammered out something that no one could hear, let alone understand, then turned to climb down. Pandi grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back, nearly causing him to lose his footing. Looking increasingly pathetic, he said, “Please let me go, District Commander. I’m a nobody, please let me go.” “Zhang Decheng,” she said truculently, “what are you afraid of?” “I’m a bachelor, stiff when I’m lying down and straight when I’m standing up. I’ve got nothing to be afraid of.” Pandi said, “Well, since you’re afraid of nothing, why don’t you speak up?” “I told you, it’s no big deal,” he said. “So let’s just forget it.” “Do you think this is some sort of game?” “Don’t get mad, District Commander. I’ll talk. What happens happens.”

Sleepyhead walked up in front of Qin Two and said, “Mr. Two, you’re an educated man. That time I went to study with you, all I did was fall asleep, right? So why did you smack my hand with a ruler until it looked like a warty toad? Not only that, you gave me a nickname. Remember what you said?” “Answer him!” Pandi roared. Mr. Qin Two looked up until his goatee stuck out straight and muttered, “That was a long time ago. I’ve forgotten.” “Of course you don’t remember,” Sleepyhead said, with rising excitement and increasing clarity. “But I’ll never forget! What you said, old master, was ‘Zhang Decheng, in my book you’re a sleepyhead.’ That is all it took for me to be saddled with the name Sleepyhead from then on. That’s what men call me and what women call me. Even snot-nosed kids call me Sleepyhead. And because I’m stuck with a rotten name like that, I still don’t have a wife at the age of thirty-eight! What girl would marry a man called Sleepyhead? That name ruined me for the rest of my life.” Poor Sleepyhead was so upset by then that his face was awash with snot and tears. The county official with the brass-capped teeth grabbed a handful of Qin Two’s gray hair and jerked his head back. “Speak up!” the man demanded. “Is what Zhang Decheng said true?” “Yes, yes it is,” Qin Two replied as his goatee quivered like a goat’s tail. The official shoved Qin Two’s head forward until his face was in the dirt. “Let’s hear more accusations,” he said.

Sleepyhead wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, squeezed a gob of snot with his fingers, and flung it away; it landed on the tent. Scowling in disgust, the VIP took out a white handkerchief to clean his glasses. “Qin Two,” Sleepyhead continued, “you’re an elitist. Back when Sima Ku was going to school, he stuffed a toad down your chamber pot and climbed up on the roof to sing a bad song about you. Did you smack him? Yell at him? Give him a nickname? No, no, and no!”

“This is wonderful!” Pandi said excitedly. “Zhang Decheng has brought a serious problem out into the open. Why didn’t Qin Two have the guts to punish Sima Ku? Because of Sima Ku’s wealthy family. And where did their wealth come from? They ate buns made of white flour, but never worked a field of wheat. They wore silk, but never raised a silkworm. They were drunk every day, but never distilled a drop of liquor. Fellow villagers, these rich landlords have fed on our blood, sweat, and tears. Redistributing their land and wealth is simply taking back what’s rightfully ours.”

The VIP applauded lightly to show his appreciation for Pandi’s impassioned speech. All the county and district officials, as well as the armed guards, joined in the applause.

Sleepyhead wasn’t finished. “Sima Ku is only one man, but he had four wives, while I have none. Is that fair?”

The VIP frowned.

Lu Liren said, “We don’t need to go into that, Zhang Decheng.”

“No?” Sleepyhead argued. “That’s the source of my bitterness. I may be Sleepyhead, but I’m a man, aren’t I? I’ve got a man’s tool hanging between my legs…”

Lu Liren walked up to Sleepyhead to stop the performance and raised his voice to drown out Sleepyhead’s monologue. “Fellow villagers,” he said, “Zhang Decheng’s words may be a little coarse for our ears, but his meaning is clear and undeniable. Why can some men take four, five, or more wives, while somebody like Zhang Decheng here can’t even find one?”

Debates broke out below the stage, and many eyes turned to Mother, whose face darkened; but there was no sign of anger or hate in her eyes, which were as serene as a placid lake in autumn.

Pandi nudged Sleepyhead. “You can go back down now.”

He took a couple of steps and was about to climb down off the stage when he was reminded of something. He turned and walked up to Zhao Six, grabbed him by the ear, and gave him a resounding slap. “You son of a bitch,” he growled. “Today’s your day too. You probably forgot the time you used the authority you received from Sima Ku to mistreat me!”

Zhao twisted his neck and drove his head into Sleepyhead’s belly. With a yelp, Sleepyhead fell to the ground and rolled off the stage.

The mute rushed up and kicked Zhao Six to the ground. Then he stepped down on Zhao’s neck, twisting the poor man’s face out of shape. He was gasping for breath, but even then he cried out like a man possessed, “You’ll never get me to admit a thing, never! Where’s your conscience? Your crimes are unspeakable…”

Lu Liren bent down to ask the VIP what to do. The man banged his red inkstone on the table, the sign for Lu Liren to read from a slip of paper: “Rich peasant Zhao Six has lived by exploiting others. During the war against Japan, he fed their fellow travelers. When Sima Ku governed the area, he supplied food to bandit soldiers. Now that land reform is underway, he has spread ugly rumors in open defiance of the People’s Government. If a die-hard element like him is not killed, the people’s anger will never be quelled. In the name of the Northeast Gaomi County People’s Government, I hereby sentence Zhao Six to death, judgment to be carried out at once!”

Two of the soldiers picked up Zhao Six and dragged him off like a dead dog. When they reached the weedy edge of the pond, the men backed away to let the mute step up and put a bullet in the back of Zhao’s head. His body lurched into the water. With the smoking gun still in his hand, the mute walked back onto the stage.

The terrified prisoners on stage began banging their heads on the ground. By then they’d all soiled themselves. “Spare me, spare me…” The cooking oil shop proprietress, Old Jin, crawled on her knees up to Lu Liren and wrapped her arms around his legs. “County Head Lu,” she sobbed, “spare me. I’ll give everything to the villagers – my oil, my sesame seeds, all my family property, I won’t keep anything, not even a chicken-feed trough – just don’t take my life. I’ll never do business that exploits people again…” Lu Liren tried to break free of her grasp, but she held on for dear life until an official came up and pried her fingers away. She then crawled toward the VIP. “Take care of her!” Lu Liren commanded. The mute raised his pistol and struck her in the temple. Her eyes rolled up into her head as she fell backward, her single breast pointing at the gloomy sky.

“Who else wants to pour out their bitterness?” Pandi shouted down at the crowd.

Someone began to wail. It was the blind man, Xu Xian’er, who propped himself up on a yellow bamboo staff.

“Lift him up onto the stage,” Pandi said.

No one did. So he made his way toward the stage by tapping his staff on the ground; people jumped out of his way. Then two officials hopped down and hoisted him up onto the stage.

Filled with hatred, Xu Xian’er banged the ground with his staff, punching holes in the loose dirt.

“Speak your piece, Uncle Xu,” said Pandi.

“Commander,” Xu Xian’er said, “can you really exact revenge for me?”

“Don’t worry. You see what we did for Zhang Decheng just now.”

“Then Fll say it,” he said, “I’ll say it. That bastard Sima Ku drove my wife to her grave, and my mother died of anger because of it. He owes me two lives.” Tears fell from his blind eyes.

“Take your time, uncle,” Lu Liren said.

“In the fifteenth year of the Republic, 1926, my mother spent thirty silver dollars to get me a wife, the daughter of a beggar woman in West Village. She sold a cow and a pig, plus two pecks of wheat, and all she got was thirty silver dollars. Everyone said my wife was pretty, but that word – pretty – spelled disaster. Sima Ku was only sixteen or seventeen at the time, but even at that age he was no good. Since his family had money and power, he made a habit of coming over to my house to sing and play his two-stringed huqin. Then one day he took my wife to see a local opera, and after he brought her home, he had his way with her. My wife swallowed opium and died, which upset my mother so much she hanged herself… Sima Ku, you owe me two lives! I want the government to right the wrong for me…”

He fell to his knees.

A district official came over to pull him to his feet, but he said, “I won’t get up if you won’t avenge me…”

“Uncle,” Lu Liren said, “Sima Ku will not escape the net of justice, and when we catch him, we will redress this injustice.”

“Sima Ku is a sparrow hawk, the king of the skies,” the blind man said. “You’ll never catch him. So I ask the government to repay one life with another. Execute his son and daughter. Commander, I know you’re related to Sima Ku, but if you are a true dispenser of justice, you’ll honor my request. If you let personal feelings get in the way, then Xu the blind man will go home and hang himself, so Sima won’t be able to get to me when he returns.”

“Uncle,” Lu Liren managed to blurt out, “every grievance has its target, every debt has its creditor. A person must be held responsible for his deeds. Since Sima Ku caused the deaths, only Sima can be held accountable. The children are blameless.”

Xu struck the ground with his staff. “Fellow villagers,” he called out, “did you hear that? Don’t let yourselves be fooled. Sima Ku has run away, Sima Ting is in hiding, and the children will be grown before you know it. County Head Lu is related to them, which counts for a great deal. Fellow villagers, alive Xu Xian’er is only this staff, and dead he is little more than food for the dogs. Compared to you, I am nothing, but, fellow villagers, do not be fooled by these people…”

Pandi blew up: “Old blind man, your demands are unreasonable!”

“Miss Pandi,” Xu the blind man said, “you and the rest of the Shangguans are impressive. When the Jap devils were here, your eldest brother-in-law, Sha Yueliang, was in charge. Then during the reign of the Kuomintang, your second brother-in-law, Sima Ku, ran roughshod over the area. Now you and Lu Liren are in charge. You Shangguans are flagpoles that cannot be cut down, boats that cannot be overturned. Someday, when the Americans rule China, your family will boast a foreign son-in-law…”

Sima Liang’s face had turned ghostly white; he was clutching Mother’s hand. Sima Feng and Sima Huang hid their faces in Mother’s armpits. Sha Zaohua was crying. So was Lu Shengli. So, too, after a while, was Eighth Sister, Yunii.

Their crying drew the attention of people both on and below the stage. The gloomy VIP looked down at us.

Xu Xian’er may have been blind, but he knelt right at the feet of the VIP. “Sir,” he howled tearfully, “stand up for this old blind man!” He banged his head on the ground as he howled, until his forehead was covered with dirt.

Lu Liren looked at the VIP, pleading with his eyes; the VIP returned his look with an icy stare that was as sharp as a knife. Lu’s face was beaded with sweat that dampened his headband, making it look like a wound on his forehead. No longer calm and at ease, he alternated between looking down at his feet and gazing out at the crowd below, the courage to make eye contact with the VIP long gone.

Pandi had also lost the poise of a district commander. Her face was bright red, her lower lip trembled. “Blind old Xu,” she shouted in the tone of a countrywoman, “you’re trying to stir up trouble! What has my family ever done to you? That slutty wife of yours seduced Sima Ku and took him out into the wheat field. Then when they were caught, she swallowed opium because she couldn’t face decent folk. Not only that, people said you used to bite her all night long, like a dog. She showed people the scars on her chest, did you know that? You were the cause of your wife’s death. What Sima Ku did was wrong, but most of the blame falls on you! So if anybody is to be shot, I say we start with you!”

“You heard that, didn’t you, exalted sir?” Blind Xu said. “Cut down the wheat stalks, and a wolf appears.”

Lu Liren quickly stepped in to mediate for Pandi. He tried to pull Xu Xian’er away, but Xu turned to jelly and would not be moved. “Uncle,” Lu said, “you are right to demand the execution of Sima Ku, but not of his innocent children.”

Xu Xian’er argued, “What were Zhao Six’s crimes? All he did was sell a few buns. It was a personal dispute with Zhang Decheng, wasn’t it? But you folks said shoot him, and that’s what you did. Esteemed County Head, I won’t rest until you execute Sima Ku’s descendants.”

Someone below the stage said softly, “Zhao Six’s aunt was Xu Xian’er’s mother, which makes them cousins.”

An unnatural smile was frozen on Lu Liren’s face as he walked hesitantly up to the VIP and, looking embarrassed, said something to him. The man caressed the glossy inkstone in his hand as a murderous look spread across his gaunt face. He glared at Lu Liren and said icily, “Do you really expect me to deal with something this insignificant?”

Lu took out a handkerchief to mop his sweaty brow, then reached back and tightened the headband, turning his face waxen. He walked up to the front of the stage and announced in a loud voice, “As the government of the masses, we carry out the wishes of the people. So now I leave it up to you. All those in favor of executing Sima Ku’s children, raise your hands.”

Infuriated, Pandi asked him, “Have you lost your mind?”

The villagers below the stage bowed their heads. No raised hands and no sound.

Lu Liren cast a questioning glance at the VIP.

With a sneer, the VIP said to Lu Liren, “Try again, but this time ask how many are in favor of not executing the children of Sima Ku.”

“All those in favor of not executing Sima Ku’s children, raise your hands.”

They kept their heads down; no raised hands and no sound.

Mother slowly rose to her feet. “Xu Xian’er,” she said, “if it’s a life you demand, then you can have mine. But your mother didn’t hang herself, she died of a blood hemorrhage that had its origin during the bandit era. My mother-in-law took care of her funeral arrangements.”

The VIP stood up and walked to the open space behind the stage. Lu Liren quickly followed. There the VIP spoke to Lu softly but rapidly, raising his soft white hand and slicing it downward, like a knife. Then he walked off, surrounded by his bodyguards.

Lu Liren remained standing there, his head bowed, like a piece of petrified wood, for a long moment before snapping out of it. Finally, he headed back, walking as if his legs were made of lead, and stared down at us with madness in his eyes. His eyeballs seemed frozen in their sockets. He looked pathetic up there. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak:

“I hereby sentence Sima Liang, son of Sima Ku, to death, to be carried out immediately! And I sentence Sima Feng and Sima Huang, daughters of Sima Ku, to death, also to be carried out immediately!”

Mother’s body rocked, but only for a moment. “I dare any of you to even try!” she said as she took the two girls in her arms. Sima Liang alertly threw himself to the ground and began crawling slowly away from the stage. The crowd shielded him.

“Speechless Sun, why aren’t you carrying out my orders?” Lu Liren roared.

“Your damned mind is addled,” Pandi cursed, “giving an order like that!”

“My mind’s not addled, it’s clear as can be,” Lu said as he pounded his head with his fist.

Hesitantly, the mute climbed down off the stage, followed by two soldiers.

Once he’d crawled to the rear of the crowd, Sima Liang jumped to his feet and ran past two sentries as he scrambled up the dike.

“He’s getting away!” a soldier up on the stage shouted.

A sentry unshouldered his rifle, pulled back the bolt, sending a bullet into the chamber, and fired into the air. By then, Sima Liang was already well hidden in the bushes on top of the dike.

The mute and his men walked up to us. His sons, Big and Little Mute, gaped at him with lonely, haughty looks in their eyes. He reached out with an iron claw; Mother spat in his face. He pulled back his claw and wiped the spittle off his face, then reached out again. Mother spat a second time, but with less force; the spittle landed on his chest. With a twist of his neck, he looked back at the people on the stage. Lu Liren was pacing back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back. Pandi was resting on her haunches, her face buried in her hands. The faces of the county and district officials and those of the armed soldiers seemed set in clay, like temple idols. The mute’s rock-hard jaw twitched out of habit. “Strip!” he said. “Strip, strip…”

Mother stuck out her chest and demanded shrilly, “Kill me first, you bastard!” Then she threw herself at him and clawed at his face.

The mute reached up and rubbed his face, then raised his hand to his eyes to see if anything was stuck to his fingers. That went on for a moment before he put his fingers up to his nose and sniffed them to see if he could detect any special odor. He then stuck his tongue out and licked his fingers to see if there was any special taste. That was followed by a series of grunts as he reached out and shoved Mother, who settled weightlessly to the ground. We threw ourselves on top of her, crying the whole time.

The mute picked us up, one at a time, and flung us out of the way. I landed on the back of some woman; Sha Zaohua landed on my belly. Lu Shengli landed on the back of an old man; Eighth Sister landed on the shoulder of an older woman. Big Mute was hanging from his father’s arm, and no amount of shaking could loosen his grip. He bit his father on the wrist. Little Mute had his arms wrapped around his father’s leg and was gnawing on his bony knee. With one kick, the mute sent that son head over heels, right into the head of a middle-aged man. Then he swung his arm with all his might, sending Big Mute flying into the lap of an old woman, a chunk of his father’s flesh in his teeth.

Picking up Sima Feng in his left hand and Sima Huang in his right, he strode off, taking high steps, as if walking through mud. W⁷hen he reached the front of the stage, he flung the two girls up onto it, one after the other. They both screamed for their grandmother and jumped down off the stage, only to be caught by the mute, who tossed them back up. By then, Mother had struggled to her feet and was staggering toward the stage; she fell before she’d taken more than a couple of steps.

Lu Liren stopped pacing and said dismally, “All you poor peasants, I ask you, am I or am I not a man? Can you not imagine how I feel about having to shoot these two little girls? My heart aches. They’re only children, after all, and relatives of mine to boot. But for that very reason, I have no choice but to swallow my tears and sentence them to death. Gome out of your stupor, my friends. By executing Sima Ku’s children, we avoid taking the wrong path. On the surface, we’ll be executing two children. And yet it’s not children we’ll be executing, but a reactionary, backward social system. We will be executing two symbols! Rise up, friends. You’re either revolutionary or counterrevolutionary, there’s no middle ground!” He was shouting so loudly he was overcome by a coughing fit. His face paled and tears gushed from his eyes. A county official stepped up and began thumping him on the back, but Lu waved him off. Once he’d caught his breath, he bent over and spat out a gob of mucus. Sounding like a man suffering from consumption, he managed to gasp, “Carry out the sentence!’

The mute hopped up onto the stage, grabbed the two girls, and carried them over to the pond, where he dropped them to the ground and backed up ten or fifteen paces. The girls wrapped their arms around each other; their long, thin faces seemed coated with gold powder. They looked at the mute with terror in their eyes as he took out his pistol and raised it heavily. His wrist bled and his hand shook from the exertion of raising the pistol, as if it weighed twenty pounds. Then – pow – a shot rang out. His hand jerked up from the recoil as blue smoke spewed from the muzzle; then his arm dropped weakly. The bullet passed over the girls’ heads and thudded into the ground in front of the pond, sending mud flying.

A woman came sailing down the weedy path along the base of the dike, a sloop in the wind, clucking loudly like a mother hen driving her brood of chicks ahead of her. The moment she appeared beneath the dike, I saw it was First Sister, who had been excused from the meeting on the basis of being mentally disturbed. As the widow of the traitor Sha Yueliang, she should have been high on the list of those to be executed, and if people had known about her one-night stand with Sima Ku, she’d have been shot twice. Seeing her throw herself into the net had me worried sick, but she ran up to the pond and planted herself in front of the two girls. “Kill me,” she shouted like a madwoman, “kill me! I slept with Sima Ku, and I am their mother!”

The mute’s chin twitched again, a sure sign that troubling waves were billowing in his heart. He raised his pistol and said gloomily, “Strip – strip – strip -”

Without a second thought, First Sister undid the buttons of her blouse and exposed her perfect breasts. The mute stared straight ahead, his eyes snapping into place; his chin twitched so violently it seemed about to fall off. Cupping his hand under his chin to keep it in place, he opened his mouth and sputtered, “Strip – strip – strip!” First Sister obediently removed her blouse; she was naked from the waist up. Her face was dark, but her body glistened like fine porcelain. On that gloomy morning, she stripped to the waist and engaged the mute in a battle of wills. He walked up to her on bowed legs, looking like a baked snowman, crumbling piece by piece – first an arm, then a leg, intestines coiling on the ground like a snake; a red heart beating in his cupped hands. All those scattered parts came back together with great difficulty when he knelt at First Sister’s feet and wrapped his arms around her waist. His big head rested against her belly.

Lu Liren and the others were stunned to witness this remarkable change, their mouths agape, as if filled with hot, sticky sweets. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking as they observed the scene beside the pond.

“Speechless Sun!” Lu Liren called out weakly, but the mighty Speechless Sun ignored him.

Pandi jumped down off the stage and ran to the pond, where she picked the jacket up off the ground and draped it around First Sister. She had hoped to drag First Sister away, but the lower half of First Sister’s body had already merged with the mute, and how could Pandi pull her away from that? So she picked up the mute’s pistol and hit him on the shoulder. He looked up at her; his eyes were awash with tears.

What happened then remains a puzzle even now. At the moment when Pandi was facing the tear-washed, trancelike face of the mute; at the moment when Sima Feng and Sima Huang stood up hand in hand, still terrified, and began looking around for their grandmother; at the moment when Mother came to her senses and began muttering as she ran toward the pond; at the moment when Xu Xian’er rediscovered his conscience and said, County Head, don’t kill them – my mother didn’t hang herself, and Sima Ku isn’t the only one responsible for the death of my wife; at the moment when a pair of dogs got into a fight in the ruins behind the house of the Muslim woman; at the moment when the sweet recollection of the game I played with Laidi in the horse trough came to me, and my mouth filled with the taste of ashes and the fragrance of elasticity of her nipple; at the moment when everyone was trying to guess where the VIP had come from and where he’d gone; at that moment two men on horseback rode in from the southeast like a whirlwind. One of the horses was white as snow, the other black as charcoal. The rider on the white horse was all in black, including a black bandanna covering the lower half of his face and a black hat. The man on the black horse was all in white, including a white bandanna covering the lower half of his face and a white hat. Both carried a pair of pistols. They were expert horsemen; they leaned slightly forward, legs hanging straight down. As they approached the pond they fired several shots in the air, so frightening the armed soldiers, not to mention the county and district officials, that they all threw themselves to the ground, facedown. The two riders whipped their horses as they circled the pond, their mounts leaning to form beautiful arcs. Then each fired another shot before whipping their mounts again and riding off, the horses’ tails fluttering in the air behind them. They vanished in front of our eyes, truly a case of coming on the winds of spring and leaving on the winds of autumn. They seemed like an illusion, though they were real enough. Slowly we regained our composure, and when we looked down we saw Sima Feng and Sima Huang laid out beside the pond, each with a bullet hole between the eyes. Everyone was paralyzed with fear.

8

On the day of the evacuation, shouting and bawling residents of Northeast Gaomi Township’s eighteen villages led their livestock, carried their chickens, supported their elders, and carried their very young up to the alkaline soil and weed-covered northern bank of the Flood Dragon River, their nerves on edge. The ground was covered with a layer of white alkali, like a coat of frost that wouldn’t melt. The leaves of grasses and reeds unaffected by the alkali were yellow, their cottony tassels waving and fluttering in the cold winds. Crows, always attracted by commotions below, wheeled and filled the sky with the ear-shattering noise of poets-Aahl Wahl Lu Liren, now demoted to deputy head of the county, stood before the stone sacrificial table of the huge crypt of a Qing dynasty scholar, shouting himself hoarse as he addressed the people mobilized to evacuate the area: “Now that bitter winter has settled in, Northeast Gaomi Township is about to turn into a vast battlefield, and not to evacuate is suicide.” Branches of the black pines were packed with crows, some of which even perched on the stone men and horses. Ahh! They cawed. Wahl The sounds not only infected the tone of Lu Liren’s speech, but increased the people’s sense of dread and solidified their determination to flee from danger.

With the firing of a gun, the evacuation got underway. The dark mass of people moved out with a clamor. Donkeys brayed and cows lowed, chickens flapped into the air and dogs leaped, old ladies cried and children whooped, all at once. A skilled young officer on a white pony raised a red flag that hung dejectedly from the staff and rode back and forth across the bumpy, alkali-covered road leading to the northeast. Leading the procession was a contingent of mules carrying county government files, dozens of them plodding ahead listlessly under the watchful eyes of young soldiers. Behind them came a camel left over from Sima Ku’s time. It carried a pair of metal boxes atop the long, dirty fur of its hump. It had spent so many years in Northeast Gaomi that it was more oxen than camel. Behind it came a dozen or so porters transporting the county printing press and a lathe for the production team repair shop. They were all swarthy, robust young men wearing thin shirts with padded shoulders, shaped like lotus leaves. From the way they swayed as they walked, their brows furrowed and their mouths open, it was easy to see how heavy their loads were. Bringing up the rear was the chaotic mass of locals.

Lu Liren, Pandi, and a host of county and district officials rode up and down the roadside on their mules and horses, trying their best to bring order to the mass evacuation. But the people were shoulder to shoulder on the narrow road, while more spacious roadsides beckoned. More and more of them left the road for the sides, as the route grew wider and wider. The expanded procession tramped noisily heading northeast. It was pandemonium.

We were carried along by the crowd, sometimes on the road, sometimes not; there were times we didn’t know if we were on the road or not. Mother had draped a hemp strap around her neck and was pushing a cart with wooden wheels; the handles were so far apart she was forced to spread her arms out. A pair of rectangular baskets hung from the sides of the cart. The basket on the left carried Lu Shengli and our quilts and clothing. Big Mute and Little Mute were in the basket on the right. Sha Zaohua and I, both carrying baskets, walked alongside the cart, one on each side. Blind little Eighth Sister held on to Mother’s coat and stumbled along behind her. Laidi, vacillating between clarity and confusion, walked ahead, leaning forward as she pulled the family cart with a strap over her shoulder, like a willing oxen. The sound of the creaking wheels grated on our ears. The three little ones in the cart kept looking at all the commotion around them. I could hear the crunching of my feet on the alkali ground and could smell its pungent odor. At first it seemed like fun, but after a few miles, my legs began to ache and my head grew heavy; my strength was ebbing and sweat dripped from my underarms. My little white milk goat, which was strong as an ox, trotted respectfully behind me. She knew what we were doing, so there was no need to tether her.

Strong winds from the north sliced painfully into our ears that day. Little clouds of white dust jumped up in the boundless wilderness all around us. Formed of alkali, salt, and saltpeter, the dust stung our eyes, burned our skin, and fouled our mouths. People forged ahead into the wind, their eyes mere slits. The porters’ shirts were sweat-soaked and covered with alkali, turning them white from head to toe. Once we entered the marshy lowland, keeping the cart’s wheels turning became a real problem. First Sister struggled mightily, the strap digging deeply into her shoulder. Her labored breathing was like a death rattle. And Mother? Tears flowed from her melancholy eyes, merging with the sweat on her face and creating a patchwork of purple ravines. Eighth Sister hung on to Mother, rolling around like a heavy bundle as our cart dug ruts in the road. But they were quickly trampled and torn up by carts, pack animals, and the people behind us. There were refugees everywhere, a great mass of faces – some familiar, others not. The going was treacherous – for the people, for the horses, and for the donkeys. The only ones having a relatively easy time were the chickens in old women’s arms and my goat, which pranced along, even stopping from time to time to nibble on the dead leaves of reeds.

The sunlight raised a painful glare on the alkali ground cover, so bright we had to close our eyes. The glare shimmered along the ground like quicksilver. Wilderness that spread out before us seemed like the legendary Northern Sea.

At noon, as if in the grips of an epidemic, the people began sitting down in groups without being told to do so. Deprived of water, their throats were smoky and their tongues were so thick and brackish they no longer functioned properly. Hot air spurted from their nostrils, but their backs and bellies were cold; the northern winds tore through sweaty clothes, turning them hard and stiff.

As she sat on a cart handle, Mother reached into one of the baskets and took out some windblown steamed buns, which she broke into pieces and handed to us. First Sister took a single bite and her lip split, oozing blood that stained the bun. The little ones in the cart, with their dusty faces and dirty hands, looked to be seven parts temple demon and three parts human. Hanging their heads, they refused the food. Eighth Sister nibbled on one of the dry buns with her dainty white teeth. “For all this you can thank your daddies and mommies,”

Mother said with a sigh. “Let’s go home, Grandma,” Sha Zaohua pleaded. Without answering, Mother looked up at the crowds of people on the hill and sighed once more. Then she looked at me. “Jintong,” she said, “you’re going to start eating differently from today on.” She reached into her bundle and took out an enamel mug stamped with a red star. Then she walked over to my goat, bent down, and cleaned the dirt off of one of its teats. When the goat balked, Mother told me to hold it. After wrapping my arms around its cold head, I watched her squeeze the animal’s teat until a white liquid began dripping into the mug. I could tell that the goat was not comfortable, for it was used to having me lie down and drink directly from its teats. It kept moving its head and arching its back like a cobra. All this time, Mother muttered a terrifying phrase over and over: “Jintong, when will you start eating regular food?” In days past, I’d tried a variety of foods, but even the best of them gave me a stomachache, after which I’d start vomiting until all that came up was a yellow liquid. I looked at Mother with shame in my eyes and launched a severe self-criticism. Because of my eccentric behavior, I’d brought Mother, not to mention myself, no end of trouble. Sima Liang had once promised to cure me of this eccentricity, but he hadn’t shown his face from the day he’d run away. His cunning little face flashed before my eyes. The lights that emanated from the gunmetal blue bullet holes in the foreheads of Sima Feng and Sima Huang made my skin crawl. I conjured up the sight of them lying side by side in their tiny willow coffins. Mother had pasted little red pieces of paper over the holes, turning bullet holes into little beauty marks. After filling the mug half full, Mother stood up and found the milk bottle the female soldier named Tang had given her for Sha Zaohua years earlier. She twisted off the top and poured the milk in, then handed me the bottle and watched me eagerly and somewhat apologetically. Although I hesitated before accepting the bottle, I didn’t want to let Mother down, and at the same time wanted to take my first step toward freedom and happiness. So I stuck the yolk-colored rubber nipple into my mouth. Naturally, it couldn’t compare with the real things on the tips of Mother’s breasts – hers were love, hers were poetry, hers were the highest realm of heaven and the rich soil under golden waves of wheat – nor could it compare with the large, swollen, speckled teats of my milk goat – hers were tumultuous life, hers were surging passion. This was a lifeless object; though it was slippery, it wasn’t moist. But what I found downright scary was that it had no taste. The mucous membranes of my mouth felt cold and greasy. But for Mother’s sake, and for my own, I forced back the feelings of disgust and bit down on it. It spoke to me as a stream of milk, tinged with the acrid taste of alkaline soil, squirted awkwardly over my tongue and up against the walls of my mouth. I took another mouthful and reminded myself, This is for Mother. Another mouthful. This is for Shangguan Jintong. I kept taking in mouthfuls and swallowing them. This is for Shangguan Laidi, for Shangguan Zhaodi, for Shangguan Niandi, for Shangguan Lingdi, for Shangguan Xiangdi, for all the Shangguans who have loved me, cared for me, and helped me, and for that lively little imp, Sima Liang, who hasn’t a drop of Shangguan blood flowing through his veins. I held my breath and, with this new tool, took the life-sustaining liquid into my body. Mother’s face was bathed in tears when I handed the bottle back to her. Laidi laughed gleefully. “Little Uncle’s grown up,” Sha Zaohua said. Forcing myself to endure the spasms in my throat and the secret pain in my gut, I took several steps forward, as if everything were perfectly all right, and pissed with the wind, spiritedly trying to see how high and how far I could send the stream of golden yellow liquid. I saw the bank of the Flood Dragon River laid out not far from where I stood; and there, vaguely, were the steeple of our village church and the towering poplar in the yard of Fan the Fourth. After traveling all morning, we’d managed such a pitifully short distance.

Pandi, who had been demoted to district chairwoman of the Women’s Salvation Society, rode in from the west on an old horse that was blind in one eye and had a numbered brand on its right flank. The animal kept its neck cocked at a strange angle and made a dull thudding sound as it ran up to us awkwardly on tired old hooves. Pandi hopped nimbly off the horse, even with her swollen belly. As I stared at her belly, I tried to see the child inside, but my eyes failed me, and all I saw were a few dark red spots on her gray uniform. “Don’t stop here, Mother,” Pandi said. “We’ve got water boiling up ahead. That’s where you should eat lunch.” “Pandi,” Mother said, “I tell you, we don’t want any part of your evacuation.” “You must, Mother,” Pandi said anxiously. “It’ll be different when the enemy returns this time. In the Bohai District, they slaughtered three thousand people in one day. The Landlord Restitution Corps even killed their own mothers.” “I don’t believe anyone could kill their own mothers,” Mother said. “I don’t care what you, say, Mother,” Pandi insisted. “I’m not going to let you go back. That’s walking straight into the net, sheer suicide. And if you’re not concerned about yourself, at least be concerned about all these kids.” She took a little bottle out of her knapsack, unscrewed the cap, and dumped out some little white pills, which she handed to Mother. “These are vitamin pills,” she said. “Each one supplies more nutrition than a head of cabbage and two eggs. When you’ve worn yourself out, take one of these, and give one to each of the children. After this stretch of alkaline soil, the road gets better, and the local folks of the Northern Sea will welcome us with open arms. So let’s go, Mother. This is no place to rest.” She grabbed a handful of horse’s mane, stepped into the stirrup, and swung up into the saddle. As she galloped off, she shouted, “Fellow villagers, get on the road. There’s hot water and oil and salted vegetables and scallions waiting for you at Wang Family Mound!”

At her urging, the people got to their feet and continued on their way.

Mother wrapped the pills in a bandanna and tucked them away in her pocket. Then she draped the strap around her neck and picked up the handles of the cart. “Come on, kids, let’s go.”

The evacuation procession lengthened until we couldn’t see either end, front or back. We walked until we reached Wang Family Mound, but there was no hot water there, nor any oil, and certainly no salted vegetables or scallions. The donkey company had left by the time we reached the village; the ground was littered with patches of straw and donkey droppings. People lit bonfires to cook dry food, while some of the boys dug up wild garlic with spiked tree branches. As we were leaving Wang Family Mound, we saw the mute and a dozen or so of his production team members coming toward us to reenter the village. Instead of dismounting, he took two half-cooked sweet potatoes and a red-skinned turnip out from under his shirt and tossed them into one of the baskets on our cart. It nearly cracked open the head of Little Mute. I took special note of the grin he flashed at First Sister. He looked like a snarling wolf or a tiger.

When the sun fell behind the mountain, we dragged our lengthening shadows into a bustling little village, where dense white smoke poured out of every chimney. Exhausted citizens lay strewn all over the streets, like scattered logs. A group of spirited officials in gray were hopping up and down amid the local villagers. At the head of the village, people crowded around the well to fetch water. The crowd was made even denser by the addition of livestock; the taste of fresh water roused the villagers. My goat snorted loudly. Laidi, carrying a large bowl – apparently a rare ceramic treasure – tried to jostle her way up to the well, but was pushed back time and again. An old cook who worked for the county government recognized us and brought us a bucket of water. Zaohua and Laidi rushed over, got down on all fours, and banged heads as they began lapping up the water. “Children first!” Mother scolded Laidi, who paused just long enough for Zaohua to bury her face in the bucket. She lapped up the water like a thirsty calf, the only difference being that she held the sides with her filthy hands. “That’s enough. You’ll get a bellyache if you drink too much,” Mother said as she pulled her away from the bucket. Zaohua licked her lips to get every last drop, as her moistened insides began to rumble. After drinking her fill, First Sister stood up; her belly stuck way out. Mother scooped up some water for Big Mute and Little Mute. Eighth Sister sniffed the air and made her way over to the bucket, where she knelt down and buried her face in the water. “Want to drink a little, Jin-tong?” Mother asked me. I shook my head. She scooped up another bowlful of water as I let go of the goat, which would have run over to the water long before if I hadn’t wrapped my arms around its neck. The goat drank thirstily from the bucket and didn’t look up once as the water sloshed down its throat and swelled its belly. The old cook showed his feelings, not with words, but with a long sigh, and when Mother thanked him, he sighed again, even louder.

“What took you so long to get here, Mother?” Pandi asked critically. Mother didn’t give her the satisfaction of responding. Instead she picked up the handles of the cart and led us, goat and all, twisting and turning through the crowd, into a small courtyard ringed by a rammed-earth wall; we suffered no end of curses and complaints as we wound our way through tiny spaces amid the crowd of people. Pandi helped Mother take the little ones off the cart in order to leave the cart and goat outside the courtyard, where the donkeys and horses were tethered. There were no baskets and no hay, so the animals fed on the bark of the trees. We left the cart in the lane, but took the goat inside with us. Pandi gave me a look, but didn’t say anything, since she knew that that goat was my lifeline.

Inside the house, a dark shadow swayed in the bright lamplight. A county official was bickering loudly about something. We heard Lu Liren’s hoarse voice. Armed soldiers were loitering in the courtyard, nursing their sore feet. Stars twinkled in the deepening night. Pandi led us into one of the side rooms, where a weak lantern projected ghostly shadows onto the walls. An old woman, dressed in funeral clothes, lay in an open coffin. She opened her eyes when we entered. “Do me a favor, kind people, and put the lid on my coffin,” she said. “I want this space to myself.” “What’s this all about, old aunty?” Mother asked her. “This is an auspicious day for me,” the old woman replied. “Do that for me, will you, kind people?” “Try to make the best of it, Mother,” Pandi said. “It’s better than sleeping in the street.”

We did not sleep well that night. The bickering in the main room continued late into the night, and the moment it stopped, gunfire erupted out on the street. That disturbance was followed by a blazing fire in the village, the flames licking skyward like red silk banners, lighting up our faces and that of the old woman lying comfortably in her coffin. At sunrise she was no longer moving. Mother called out to her, but she didn’t open her eyes. A check of her pulse showed that she had died. “She’s a semi-immortal,” Mother said as she and First Sister placed the lid on.

The next few days were even harder on us, and by the time we reached the foot of Da’ze Mountain, Mother’s and First Sister’s feet were rubbed raw. Big and Little Mute had both developed coughs, while Shengli had a fever and diarrhea. Reminded of the pills Fifth Sister had given her, Mother took out one and gave it to Shengli. Poor Eighth Sister was the only one who wasn’t sick. It had been two full days since we’d last seen Pandi or, for that matter, any county or district officials. We’d seen the mute once, as he carried a wounded soldier on his back, a man whose leg had been blown off, and whose blood dripped off his torn, useless pant leg. He was sobbing. “Do a good deed, Commander, finish me off, the pain’s killing me, oh dear Mother…”

It must have been on our fifth day on the road when we saw a tall, white, tree-covered mountain rise up out of the north. A little monastery sat on its peak. From the bank of the Flood Dragon River, behind our house, this mountain was visible on clear days; but it had always shown up dark green. Seeing it close up, its shape and clean, crisp smell made me realize how far from home we had traveled. As we walked along a broad gravel-paved road, we met a detachment of troops on horseback coming toward us; the soldiers were dressed the same as those of the 16th Regiment. It was clear, as they passed us, heading in the opposite direction, that our home had become a battlefield. Foot soldiers were the next to come down the road, followed by a detachment of donkeys pulling artillery pieces, the muzzles sporting bouquets of flowers; soldiers perched on the big guns had smug, confident airs. After the artillery detachment passed, stretcher bearers and two columns of wagon troops came down the road; the wagons were loaded with sacks of flour and rice, plus bales of hay. We hugged the roadsides timidly to let the troops pass.

Some of the foot soldiers stepped out of line with their Mausers and asked what was going on. At this point, Wang Chao, the barber, who had joined the procession with his smart-looking rubber-tired cart, ran into trouble, as one of the wooden-wheeled provisions carts broke an axle. The driver flipped the cart over, removed the axle, and examined it closely until his hands were black with grease. His son was no more than fifteen or sixteen, with sores on his face and an ulcerated mouth. He was wearing a shirt with no buttons and a belt made of hemp. “What happened, Dad?” he said. “The axle’s broken, son.” Father and son took the wheel off of the axle. “Now what, Dad?” His father walked to the side of the road and wiped his greasy hands on the rough bark of a poplar tree. “Nothing we can do,” he said. Just then a one-armed soldier in a thin army uniform, rifle over his back and a dogskin cap on his head, stepped out of the line of carts ahead and ran over.

“Wang Jin!” he shouted angrily. “What are you doing out of line? What’s the idea? Are you trying to make our Iron and Steel Company lose face?”

“Political Instructor,” Wang Jin said with a frown, “we broke an axle.”

“You couldn’t let it happen a little earlier or a little later, could you? You had to wait till we were going into battle, didn’t you? I told you to check your cart carefully before we left, didn’t I?” He slapped Wang Jin angrily.

“Ouch!” Wang Jin yelped as he lowered his head; blood trickled out of his nose.

“Why did you hit my father?” the gutsy youngster asked the political instructor.

The political instructor froze. “I didn’t do it intentionally,” he said. “But you’re right, I shouldn’t have bumped him. But if the provisions don’t get there in time, I’ll have you both shot.”

“We didn’t break the axle on purpose,” the youngster said. “We’re poor and we had to borrow this cart from my aunt.”

Wang Jin pulled some ratty cotton filling out of his sleeve and stuffed it up his bloody nose. “Political Instructor,” he muttered, “please be reasonable.”

“Reasonable?” the political instructor said menacingly. “Getting provisions up to the front lines is reasonable. Not getting them there is unreasonable. I’ve had enough of your prattling. You’re going to transport these two hundred and forty pounds of millet up to Taoguan Township if you have to lug it on your backs!”

“Political Instructor, you’re always saying how we need to be practical and realistic. Two hundred and forty pounds of millet… he’s just a boy… please, I beg you…”

The political instructor looked up into the sunny sky, then down at his watch, and surveyed the area. His gaze fell first on our wooden-wheeled cart, then on Wang Chao’s rubber-tired cart.

Wang Chao was a bachelor, a practiced barber who had made plenty of money, some of which he spent on his favorite food, pig’s head. Well fed, he had a square face, big ears, and a healthy complexion. Nothing like a farmer. In his cart he carried a box with his barber’s tools and an expensive quilt wrapped with a dog’s pelt. The cart was made from the wood of a scholar tree, coated with tung oil that made the wood shine. It was a good-looking, good-smelling cart. Before setting out, he’d pumped up the tires, so that the cart bounced lightly on the hard surface of the road, hardly disturbing its contents. A strong man, he was never without a flask of liquor, from which he drank regularly as he moved spryly, singing little ditties and having a grand old time. Among us refugees, he was royalty.

The political instructor’s dark eyes rolled in his head as he headed over to the side of the road with a smile on his lips. “Where are you people from?” he asked pleasantly.

No one answered him. Then his glance shifted to the face of Wang Chao and his smile vanished, replaced by a look as formidable as a mountain and as forbidding as a remote monastery. “What do you do for a living?” he asked, his eyes fixed on Wang Chao’s big, oily face.

Wang Chao rather stupidly looked away, tongue-tied.

“By the looks of you,” the political instructor said, “if you’re not a landlord, you’re a rich peasant, and if you’re not a rich peasant, you’re a shop owner. Whatever you are, you certainly don’t make a living by the sweat of your brow. No, you’re a parasite who lives by exploiting others!”

“You’ve got me all wrong, Commander,” Wang Chao protested. “I’m a barber, a man who makes a living with his hands. I live in two run-down rooms. I’ve got no land, no wife, and no kids. If I eat my fill, no one in the family goes hungry. I eat for today, and let tomorrow take care of itself. They checked my background at the district and gave me a label as an artisan, which is the same as a middle peasant, basic work.”

“Nonsense!” the one-armed man said. “As I see it, you may have a clever mouth, but a parrot can’t talk its way through Tong Pass. I’m commandeering your cart!” He turned to Wang Jin and his son. “Take down the millet and load it on this cart.”

“Commander,” Wang Chao said, “this little cart cost me half a lifetime of savings. You’re not supposed to appropriate poor people’s possessions.”

The one-armed man replied angrily, “I gave one of my arms in the cause of victory. Just how much is one little cart worth? Our frontline troops are waiting for these provisions, and I don’t want to hear any protests from you.”

“You and I are from different districts, sir,” Wang Chao said. “And different counties. So what authority do you have to commandeer my cart?”

“Who cares about county or district,” the one-armed man said. “This is support for the front lines.”

“No,” Wang Chao, “I can’t let you do that.”

The one-armed man knelt down on one knee, took out a pen, and removed its cap with his teeth. Then he laid a slip of paper across his knee and scribbled something on it. “What’s your name?” he asked. “And which county and district are you from?”

Wang Chao told him.

“Your county head, Lu Liren, and I are old comrades-in-arms. So here’s what we’ll do. After the battle’s over, you give this to him, and he’ll see that you get a new cart.”

Wang Chao pointed to us and said, “That’s Lu Liren’s mother-in-law, sir. That’s his family.”

“Madam,” the one-armed man said, “you’ll be my witness. Just tell him that the situation was critical, and that Guo Mofu, political instructor of the Eighth Militia Company of the Bohai District, borrowed a pushcart belonging to the villager Wang Chao, and ask him to take care of it for me.”

Then he turned back to Wang Chao. “That’ll do it,” he said as he pressed the slip of paper into Wang’s hand. Then he turned and said angrily to Wang Jin, “What are you standing around for? If we don’t get these provisions there in time, you and your son will taste the whip, and me, Guo Mofu, I’ll taste the bullet!” He turned to Wang Chao. “Unload your cart, and be quick about it!”

“What am I supposed to do, sir?” Wang Chao said.

“If you’re worried about your cart, you can come along with us. Our porter company has enough food for one more man. Once the battle’s over, you can take your cart with you.”

“But, sir, I just escaped from there,” Wang Chao said tearfully.

“Are you going to make me take out my pistol and put a bullet in you?” the enraged political instructor demanded. “We’re not afraid to spill blood and make sacrifices for the revolution. I can’t believe you’re making such a fuss over a little cart.”

“Aunt,” Wang Chao said pathetically. “You’re my witness.”

Mother nodded.

Wang Jin and his son gleefully walked off with Wang Chao’s rubber-tired cart, as the one-armed man nodded politely to Mother, before turning and running off to catch up with his men.

Wang Chao sat down on his quilt, a pained look on his face, mumbling to himself. “Talk about bad luck! Why does everything happen to me? Who did I offend?” Tears slid down his fat cheeks.

We finally made it to the foot of the mountain, where the gravel road spoked off into ten or more narrow paths that wound their way up the mountainside. That evening, the refugees gathered in groups where all sorts of dialects were spoken, to pass on conflicting reports. We suffered through the night huddled amid the underbrush at the foot of the mountain. Dull explosions, like peals of thunder, sounded both to the north and the south, as artillery shells tore through the darkness in sweeping arcs. The air turned cold and damp as the night deepened, and bitter winds snaked out of mountain crevasses, violently shaking the leaves and branches of our shelter and setting fallen leaves rustling. Foxes in their dens cried mournfully. Sick children moaned like unhappy cats; the coughs from old folks sounded like gongs being struck. It was a terrible night, and when dawn broke, we would find dozens of frozen corpses lining the mountain hollows – children, old folks, even young men and women. Our family owed its survival to the unusual low trees, with their golden leaves, that protected us. They were the only trees whose leaves had not fallen. We lay together on the thick, dry grass beneath the trees, huddled under the one quilt we’d brought. My goat lay up against my back and shielded me from the wind. The hours after midnight were the worst. The rumble of artillery fire to the south only increased the stillness of the night; people’s moans cut deeply into our hearts and made us tremble. A melody much like the familiar “cat’s meow,” our local drama, sounded in our ears. It was a woman’s sobs. Amid the overwhelming silence, the sounds sliced into the rocks, cold and damp, and dark clouds stuck to the icy quilt that covered us. Then the rain came, freezing rain; raindrops fell on our quilt, they fell on the rustling yellow leaves, they fell on the mountainside, they fell on the refugees’ heads, and they fell on the thick coats of baying wolves. Most of the raindrops turned to ice before they hit the ground, where they formed a hard crust.

I was reminded of that night years before when Elder Fan Three had led us away from sure death, his torch held high, flames the red of a roan colt dancing in the air. That night I’d been immersed in a warm sea of milk, holding on to a full breast with both hands and feeling myself fly up to Paradise. But now the frightful apparition began, like a golden ray of light splitting the darkness, or like the beam of light from Babbitt’s film projector; thousands of icy droplets danced in the light, like beetles, as a woman with long, flowing hair appeared, a cape like sunset draped over her shoulders, its embedded pearls glittering and casting shimmers of light, some long and some short. Her face kept changing: first Laidi; then the Bird Fairy; then the single-breasted woman, Old Jin; and then suddenly the American woman…

“Jintong!” Mother was calling me. She brought me out of my hallucinations. In the darkness, she and First Sister were massaging my arms and legs to bring me back before I fell into the abyss of death.

The sound of someone crying emerged from the underbrush in the hazy sunlight of early morning. People faced with the stiffened corpses of loved ones gave vent to their grief with loud wails. But thanks to the yellow leaves on the trees above us and the tattered quilt that covered us, all seven of our hearts were still beating. Mother handed each of us one of the pills Pandi had given her. I said I didn’t want mine, so Mother shoved it into the mouth of my goat. After chewing up the pill, the goat turned its attention to the leaves of the underbrush; they, like the branches from which they hung, were covered by a filmy layer of ice, which also hung from boulders on the mountainside. There was no wind, but a freezing rain continued to fall, making a loud tattoo on the branches. The surface of the mountain glistened like a mirror.

One of the refugees, leading a donkey with a woman’s corpse draped over its back, was trying to make his way up one of the mountain paths. But the going was so treacherous that the donkey slipped on the ice, and every time it got to its feet, it hit the ground again. The man wanted to help, but he invariably fell down too. It did not take long for their plight to result in the corpse slipping off the animal’s back and into a ditch. Just then a golden-pelted wildcat emerged from one of the mountain hollows carrying a child in its mouth as it bounded awkwardly from one boulder to another, struggling to keep its balance as it moved. A woman whose hair was in disarray was chasing the wildcat, shrieking and wailing as she ran, but she too kept losing her footing on the icy rocks. Unfazed, every time she fell, she scrambled to her feet and continued the chase, for which she paid a heavy price: chin split open, teeth knocked out, a gash on the back of her head, broken fingernails, a sprained ankle, a dislocated shoulder, and traumatized internal organs. And still she kept going, until the wildcat slowed down enough for her to grab it by the tail.

Danger lurked for everyone: if they tried to move, they fell; if they didn’t try, they froze to death. And since freezing to death was not an option, they kept falling, and soon lost sight of their evacuation goal. The mountaintop monastery had by then turned white and gave off a frigid glare. So did the trees halfway up the mountain. At that height, the freezing rain turned to snow. Lacking the nerve to climb to the top, the people merely kept moving at the foot of the mountain. We looked up and spotted the body of Wang Chao the barber hanging from a rubber tree; he had looped his belt over a low-hanging branch, the weight of his body nearly breaking it off from the trunk. The toes of his shoes were touching the ground, his pants were down around his knees, and his padded jacket was tied around his waist to salvage his image, even in death. One look at that purple face and protruding tongue, and I turned away in disgust. But too late to keep the image of his dead face from appearing often in my dreams from that day on. No one gave him a second thought, although several simple-looking people were fighting over his quilt and the dog pelt that covered it. In the midst of their grappling, a tall young man suddenly screamed in pain; a ratty little man beside him had bitten off a chunk of one of his protruding ears. The fellow spat the earlobe into his hand, looked it over, and handed it back to it owner, before picking up the heavy quilt and dog pelt. To keep from falling, he took little hops over to the side of an old man, who promptly whacked him on the head with a forked stick used to keep a cart from rolling away. The little fellow hit the ground like a sack of rice. The old man picked up the quilt, backed up against a tree, holding on to his prize with one hand and brandishing his forked stick with the other. Some foolhardy young devils entertained thoughts of taking the quilt away from the old man, but a mere tap of his forked stick sent them tumbling to the ground. The old man was wearing a long robe cinched at the waist with a length of coarse cloth from which hung his pipe and tobacco pouch. His long white beard was dotted with icy globules. “Come on if you’re willing to die!” he shouted shrilly as his face seemed to lengthen and green lights shot from his eyes. His would-be attackers fled in panic. Mother reached a decision: Turn back!

Picking up the handles of the cart, she wobbled off in a southwestern direction. The ice-covered axle creaked and groaned. But we set an example for others, who, without a word, fell in behind us – some even passed us in their hurry to get back to their homes.

Shards of ice crackled and exploded beneath the wheels, but were quickly replaced by the freezing rain that continued to fall. Before long, ice the size of buckshot pierced our earlobes and stung our faces. The vast countryside set up a loud cacophony. We headed back much the same way as we’d come: Mother pushing the cart from behind, while First Sister pulled from the front. First Sister’s shoes split open in the back, exposing her chapped, frozen heels, and forced her to walk as if she were performing a rice-sprout dance. Every time Mother tipped the cart over, First Sister went down with it. The rope was pulled so taut that she fell head over heels more than once, until she cried out with every step she took. Zaohua and I were crying too, but not Mother. Her eyes had a blue cast as she bit down on her lip for strength. She moved cautiously, but with courage and steely determination. Her tiny feet were like two little spades that dug solidly into the ground. Eighth Sister followed silently behind, holding on to Mother’s clothes with a hand that looked like a rotten, water-soaked eggplant.

We were in a hurry to get home, and by noontime we’d reached the broad, poplar-lined gravel road. Although the sun hadn’t broken through the clouds, the sky was bright and the road seemed paved with glazed tiles. Snowflakes gradually replaced the hailstones, turning the road, the trees, and the surrounding fields white. We saw many corpses along the way, human and animal, and an occasional sparrow or magpie or wild hen. But no dead crows. Their black feathers were nearly blue against the white backdrop, and glossy. They feasted on the dead, making quite a racket.

Then our luck improved. First, next to a dead horse we found half a sack of chopped straw mixed with broad beans and bran. That filled my goat’s belly, and what was left was used to cover the feet of Big and Little Mute to protect them against the wind and snow. Once the goat had eaten its fill, it licked snow for the moisture. I knew what it meant when it nodded in my direction. After we were back on the road, Zaohua said she smelled roasted wheat in the air. Mother told her to follow the smell to its source. In a little hut overlooking a cemetery, we discovered the body of a dead soldier; lying beside him were two sacks filled with roasted wheat. We’d grown used to seeing dead people, and were no longer afraid. We spent the night in that hut.

First, Mother and First Sister dragged the dead young soldier outside. He’d killed himself by holding his rifle against his chest and putting the muzzle into his mouth, and then, after removing his worn sock, pulling the trigger with his toe. The bullet had blown off the top of his head; rats had eaten his ears and nose and had gnawed his fingers down to the bone, until they looked like willow twigs. Hordes of rats glared red-eyed as Mother and First Sister dragged him outside. Even though she was exhausted, Mother wanted to give thanks for the food, so she knelt on the frozen ground and, using the soldier’s bayonet, dug a shallow hole to bury his head. A little dugout like that meant next to nothing to a bunch of rats who survived by digging holes, but it brought comfort to Mother.

The hut was barely big enough to accommodate our little family and its goat. We blocked the door with our cart, with Mother sitting closest to the door, armed with the soldier’s brain-spattered rifle. As night fell, clusters of people tried to squeeze into our little hut; there were plenty of thieves and no-accounts among them, but Mother frightened them all away with her rifle. One man with a big mouth and malevolent eyes challenged her: “You know how to shoot that?” he said as he tried to force his way in. Mother poked at him with the rifle. She didn’t know how to shoot it. So Laidi took it away from her, pulled back the bolt, ejecting a spent cartridge, then pushed the bolt forward, sending a bullet into the chamber. Then she aimed the rifle above the man’s head and pulled the trigger. A column of smoke rose to the ceiling. Watching the way Laidi handled the weapon made me think of her glorious history as she followed Sha Yueliang from battlefield to battlefield. The big-mouthed man crawled away like a whipped dog. Mother looked at Laidi with gratitude in her eyes, before getting up and moving inside so the new guard could take her place.

That night I slept like a baby, not waking up until red sunbeams had lit up the snowy white world. I wanted to get down on my knees and beg Mother to let us stay in this ghostly little hut, stay here next to this towering cemetery, stay in this snow-covered pine grove. “Let’s not leave this happy spot, this lucky spot.” But she picked up the handles of her cart and led us back on the road. The rifle lay alongside Shengli, under our tattered quilt.

There was half a foot of snow on the road; it crunched beneath our feet and the wheels of our cart. No longer falling as often, we were able to make pretty good time. The glare of the sun was blinding, making us look especially dark by contrast, no matter what we were wearing. Mother w^ras bolder than usual that day, maybe because of the presence of the rifle in the basket and Laidi’s ability to use it. She turned into a bit of a tyrant at around noon, when a retreating soldier, a straggler from the south, the sling around his arm giving the illusion that he was wounded, decided he’d search our cart. Mother slapped him so hard his gray cap flew off. He took off running without even stopping to retrieve his cap, which Mother picked up and clapped onto the head of my goat. The goat wore its new cap proudly; the cold, hungry refugees around us parted their lips and, with what energy they had left, managed an array of laughter that actually sounded worse than weeping and wailing.

Early the next day, after my morning meal of goat’s milk, my spirits soared; my thoughts were lively and my perceptions keen. As I looked around, I discovered the county government’s printing machine and the document-filled metal cases lying abandoned by the side of the road. Where were the porters? No way of knowing. And the mule company? Gone too.

There was plenty of activity on the road, as columns of stretcher bearers headed south with their moaning cargo of wounded soldiers. The bearers panted from exhaustion, their faces bathed in sweat; they kicked snow into the air with their ragged movements. A woman in white was staggering along behind the stretcher bearers when one of them stumbled and fell, dumping the shrieking soldier he was carrying onto the ground. The man’s head was swathed in bandages, leaving only the black holes of his nostrils and his pale lips visible. A soldier carrying a leather case on her back rushed up to curse the careless porter and console the wounded soldier. I recognized her at once: it was the woman named Tang, Pandi’s comrade-in-arms. She cursed the militiamen in the coarsest language and spoke gently to the wounded soldiers. I saw deep wrinkles on her forehead and crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes; a once vivacious young soldier had turned into a haggard, matronly woman. But she didn’t even look at us, and Mother didn’t seem to recognize her.

The line of stretchers seemed never-ending. We hugged the side of the road so as not to slow down their procession. Finally, the last stretcher passed, leaving the icy roadway a mess from all the tramping it had withstood. Melted snow was now nothing but dirty water and mud; unmelted snow was spotted with fresh blood, giving it the horrifying look of rotting skin. My heart clenched as my nostrils filled with the smell of melting snow and the stench of human blood. That and the repulsive smell of sweaty bodies. We got back on the road, with considerably more trepidation now; even the milk goat, which had been prancing along proudly with its army cap, trembled fearfully, like a new recruit on his first day in battle. The rest of the people paced up and down on the road, unable to decide whether to keep going or to head back. The road to the southwest led to a battlefield, that was a given, and would take us straight into a forest of weapons and a hailstorm of gunfire; everyone knew that bullets don’t have eyes, that artillery shells aren’t given to apologies, and that soldiers are tigers down off the mountain, none of them vegetarians. People cast questioning glances back and forth, but no answers were forthcoming. Without looking at anyone, Mother forged ahead with her cart. When I turned to look, I saw that some of the refugees had turned and were heading to the northeast, while others fell in behind us.

We spent the first night after the fighting in the same place we’d spent the first night of the evacuation: the same little courtyard and the same little side room, complete with the coffin in which the old woman had lain. The only difference was that nearly all the buildings in the tiny village had been leveled; even the three-room hut where Lu Liren and members of the county government had lived was now nothing but a pile of rubble. We entered the village just before nightfall, when the setting sun was a blood-red ball. The street was littered with broken bodies; twenty or more mangled corpses had been stacked neatly in an open square, as if connected by an invisible thread. The air was hot and dry; a number of trees with charred limbs appeared to have been struck by lightning. ClankX First Sister stubbed her toe on a helmet with a hole in it. I stumbled and fell after stepping on a bunch of spent cartridges that were still warm to the touch. The smell of burnt rubber hung in the air, mixed with the pungent odor of gunpowder. The black barrel of a lonely cannon poked out from a pile of broken bricks, pointing up at cold stars flickering in the sky. The village was quiet as death; we felt as if we were walking through the legendary halls of Hell. The number of refugees following us home had slowly dwindled until finally there were no more – we were alone. Mother had stubbornly brought us here. Tomorrow we would cross the alkaline-blanketed northern bank of the Flood Dragon River, then the river itself, and from there to the place we called home. We’d be home. Home.

Amid the ruins of the village, only that little two-room hut remained standing, as if it had continued to exist just for us. We pulled away the fallen beams and posts that blocked the door and went inside. The first thing we saw was the coffin, which brought home the realization that after nearly twenty days and nights, we were right back where we had spent that first night. “The will of Heaven!” Mother said tersely.

As soon as it was light outside, Mother got busy putting the kids and our belongings – rifle included – on the cart.

Suddenly the road was swarming with people, most in army uniforms, and all equipped with leather belts from which wood-handled grenades hung. Spent cartridges lay here and there on the ground, and in the roadside ditch artillery casings lay alongside dead horses with their bellies blown open. Mother abruptly reached into the cart for the rifle and flung it into the icy water in the ditch. A man carrying two heavy wooden cases on a shoulder pole looked at us in astonishment. He laid down his load and retrieved the rifle.

As we neared Wang Family Mound, a blast of hot air hit us in the face, as if from a huge smelting oven. Smoke and mist hung over the village, trees at the entrance were covered with soot, and hordes of flies that seemed out of place swarmed from the rotting innards of dead horses to the faces of dead humans.

To avoid trouble, Mother turned onto a path that skirted our village; the badly rutted path made the going difficult for our cart, so she put it down, took the oil jug off the handle, dipped a feather into the oil, and spread it on the axle and the hubs of the wheels. Her puffy hands looked like baked sorghum cakes. “Let’s go into that stand of trees to rest awhile,” Mother said after she finished oiling the cart. After so many days on the road, Shengli and Big and Little Mute had gotten used to doing what they were told without so much as a whimper. They knew that riding in the cart cost them their right to object to anything. The freshly oiled wheels now sang out loudly. Not far off the path was a desiccated patch of sorghum with dried-out buds on the dark tassels, some pointing to the sky, others sagging to the ground.

As we drew up to the trees, we discovered a hidden artillery blind with dozens of cannon barrels, looking like the necks of aging turtles. Tree branches had been used as camouflage; the wheels were mired deeply in the ground. A row of cases lay on the ground behind the big guns, the open ones revealing artillery shells neatly stacked and looking quite pampered. The gun crews, all wearing camouflage headgear, were squatting or standing under trees, drinking water out of enamel bowls. A cauldron with iron handles sat on a rack over an open fire behind them. Horsemeat was cooking in the cauldron. How did I know it was horsemeat? I spotted a horse hoof, ringed with long hairs, like goat whiskers, poking up over the top, a horseshoe glinting in the sunlight. The cook was putting the branch of a pine tree into the fire. Flames licked skyward as the liquid in the cauldron roiled and steamed, causing the pitiful horse’s leg to tremble nonstop.

A man who looked like an officer came running up and gently urged us to turn around and head back. Mother replied with cold self-assurance. “Captain,” she said, “if you force us to leave, we have no choice. But we will just have to find another way around the place.” “Don’t you fear for your lives?” the man said, clearly puzzled. “You’re not afraid of losing your family to artillery fire? You don’t know how powerful these guns are.” “We’ve come this far not because we’re afraid of death, but because death is afraid of us,” Mother replied. The man stepped aside. “You’re free to go where you want.”

We moved on, traveling through an alkaline wilderness. We had no choice but to follow along behind Mother. Actually, we were following along behind Laidi. Throughout our arduous journey, Laidi pulled the cart like an uncomplaining beast of burden and, when necessary, stopped to fire the rifle at anyone who threatened our safety when we stopped for the night, for which she earned my admiration and respect.

The deeper we went into the wilderness, the harder the going on the heavily trampled road. So we moved off the road and onto the alkaline ground. Unmelted snow made the ground look like a head with scabies, the occasional clump of dead grass like tufts of hair. Though danger seemed to lurk in the area, noisy flocks of larks still flew overhead and a cluster of wild rabbits the color of dead grass set up a skirmish line before a white fox, attacking it with high-pitched whoops. Having suffered bitterly and nursing deep hatred for the fox, they mounted a heroic charge. Behind them, a bunch of wild goats with finely chiseled faces moved up in fits and starts, and I couldn’t tell if they were backing up the rabbits or just curious.

Something in the grass glittered in the sunlight. Zaohua ran over, picked it up, and handed it to me across the cart. It was a metal mess kit. Inside were little golden-fried fish. I handed it back to her. She picked up one of the fish and offered it to Mother, who said, “None for me. You eat it.” Zaohua ate the fish daintily, like a cat. Big Mute reached out from the basket with his dirty little hand and grunted, “Ao!” Little Mute did the same. Both boys had square, gourdlike faces, eyes high up on their heads, which made their foreheads seem smaller than normal. Their noses were flat, with long grooves that led to wide mouths and short, upturned upper lips that failed to hide their yellow teeth. Zaohua looked over at Mother to see what she should do. But Mother was looking off into the distance. So Zaohua picked up two of the fish and gave them each one. Now the mess kit was empty, except for a few scraps of fish and little spots of oil. She licked it clean. “Let’s rest awhile,” Mother said. “We don’t have far to go before we should be able to see the church.”

I lay on my back on the alkaline ground and gazed up into the sky. Mother and First Sister took off their shoes and knocked them against the handles of the cart to empty them of alkaline soil. The heels of their feet looked like rotten yams. All of a sudden, a frightened flock of birds swooped down close to the ground. Had they seen a hawk? No, it was a pair of black, double-winged airships buzzing through the sky from the southeast. The sound they made was like a thousand spinning wheels turning at the same time. At first they were flying high up in the air, traveling slowly, but when they were directly overhead, they went into a dive and picked up speed. They flew with the grace of winged calves, plunging at full speed, propellers buzzing loudly, like hornets circling the head of a cow. As they flew past, nearly scraping the top of our cart, one of the goggled men behind the glass smiled at us like an old friend. I thought he looked familiar, but before I could get a good look, he and his smile sped past me like a bolt of lightning. A violent gust of swirling wind, carrying a cloud of fine dust sucked up loose grass, sand, and rabbit pellets, and flung them into us like a hail of bullets. The mess kit in Zaohua’s hand flew into the air. Panic-stricken, I jumped up, spitting dirt out of my mouth, as the second airship bore down on me even more savagely, spitting two long tongues of flame from its belly. Bullets kicked up dirt all around us. Trailing black smoke behind them, the airships tacked to one side and flew into the sky above the sandy ridge. Flames continued to spurt from under their wings in bursts, the sound like barking dogs, sending more puffs of yellow dirt up into the air. They dove and dipped like swallows skimming the surface of water, swooping down recklessly and then abruptly soaring upward again, sunlight dancing off the glass and turning the wings a bright steel blue. Dust gray soldiers on the sandy ridges were thrown into a panic, leaping and shouting. Yellow flames spat into the sky around them, announcing the insistent crack of gunfire, like continuous gusts of wind. The airships were like gigantic startled birds wheeling through the sky, the sound of their engines like a crazed form of singing. One of them abruptly stopped wheeling as thick black smoke belched from its belly; it gurgled, it rocked, it spun, and then it plunged straight down into the wilderness, gouging out a furrow in the mud below. The wings shuddered briefly before a crackling ball of fire consumed its belly, creating an earsplitting blast that rocked all the wild rabbits in the vicinity. The other bird banked sharply high above with a cry of anguish, and flew off.

At that moment, we saw that half of Big Mute’s head had disappeared and that a fist-sized hole had appeared in Little Mute’s belly. Not yet dead, he showed us the whites of his eyes. Mother grabbed a handful of alkaline dirt and pressed it up against the hole, but too late to hold back the sizzling green liquid and white intestines that squirmed out. She rammed more and more dirt up into the hole, but couldn’t stop the flow. Little Mute’s intestines began filling up the basket. My goat’s front legs buckled, drawing a series of strange-sounding complaints; then its belly contracted violently and its back arched, as it threw up a mouthful of half-eaten grass. First Sister and I both bent over and vomited. Mother, her hands smeared with fresh blood, stood there gaping in bewilderment at the mass of intestines. Her lips were quivering; suddenly, her mouth flew open, releasing a jet of red liquid, followed by loud, grief-stricken wails.

Shortly after that, volleys of black artillery shells tore into the sky like flocks of crows from the artillery blind in the little stand of trees, heading straight for our village. Blue flashes of light turned the sky above the grove the color of lilacs. The sun was a dull, colorless gray. After the first volley, the ground trembled, followed by the shrieks of the shells overhead; then came the muted thuds of explosions, sending columns of white smoke into the air above our village. Finally, the shooting stopped, producing a momentary silence that was quickly shattered when guns on the opposite bank of the Flood Dragon River sent their answer our way with even bigger shells; some landed among the trees, others fell in the open wilderness. And so it went, like a series of family visits. Waves of hot air swept across the wilderness. After an hour or so, the stand of trees went up in flames as the guns fell silent. But not those from our village, as their shells fell farther and farther off in the distance. All of a sudden, the sky above the sandy ridge was blue with flying shells that whistled through the air and landed on our village. The volleys dwarfed those that had come from the trees, both in numbers and impact. I’ve described the volleys from the grove as flocks of crows. Well, those that burst from behind the sandy ridge were like neat formations of little black pigs, with loud oinks and twitching tails until they chased each other straight into our village. When they landed, they were no longer little black pigs, but big black panthers, tigers, wild boars, biting everything they touched with fangs like ripsaws. As the artillery battle raged, the airships returned; but this time there were twelve of them, flying in pairs, wingtip to wingtip. From high up in the sky, they dropped their eggs, creating holes over the landscape. And then? A column of tanks rumbled out of our village. At the time I didn’t know those clumsy machines with long, trunklike gun barrels were called tanks. Once the column reached the alkaline wilderness, the tanks spread out, followed by helmeted foot soldiers, trotting at a crouch and firing into the air. Pow pow pow. Pow pow pow. Pow pow pow pow pow pow pow. Hit-or-miss. We dashed over to one of the artillery craters, where some of us sat and others flattened out on the ground, yet calmly, as if unafraid.

The caterpillar tracks under the tanks sped along, one link following the other, carrying the tank ahead with a loud rumble. Ruts and humps didn’t faze them; their trunks kept pointing forward. They raced along, wheezing, sneezing, spitting, a column of outrageous tyrants. Tiring of spitting their phlegm, they began spitting fireballs, the trunks recoiling with each burst. All they had to do was spin back and forth a time or two to flatten out a ditch, sometimes burying khaki-colored little men in the process. Everywhere they passed was now a mass of newly plowed soil. They rolled up to the sandy ridge, where bullets rained down on them – pow pow. They just bounced off. But not off the soldiers behind them, who crumpled in droves. A platoon of men ran out from behind the sandy ridge with sorghum-stalk torches, which they flung beneath the tanks. Explosions sent some of the tanks leaping off the ground and men rolling on the ground in front of them. A few of the tanks died, others were wounded. More men on the sandy ridge reacted like rubber balls, rolling down the sides to do battle with the helmeted soldiers. Jumbled shouts, incoherent screams. Flying fists, well-aimed kicks, choke holds, squeezed groins, bitten fingers, grabbed ears, gouged eyes. Silvery swords went in, red swords emerged. No form of battle went untried. A little soldier was losing to a bigger one, so he picked up a handful of sand and said, “Elder brother, you and I are distant cousins. The wife of a cousin on my father’s side is your kid sister. So please don’t use that rifle butt on me, okay?” “All right,” the bigger soldier said, “I’ll spare you this time, since I’ve sat in your house and enjoyed a few drinks. That wine decanter at your place is finely crafted. Those things are called Mandarin Duck decanters.” Without warning, the little soldier flung his sand into the bigger soldier’s face, blinding him temporarily. He then ran around behind the man and cracked his head open with a hand grenade.

There was so much happening that day that I’d have had to grow ten pairs of eyes to see it all and ten mouths to tell it. Helmeted soldiers charged in waves, the dead piling up like a wall; and still they couldn’t break through. Then they brought over flamethrowers that spurted death and crystallized the sand on the ridge. And more airships came, dropping great flatcakes and meat-filled buns, as well as bundles of colorful paper money. Exhausted by nightfall, both sides stopped to rest, but only for a short while, before the battle recommenced, so heated that sky and earth turned red, the frozen ground softened, and wild rabbits died in droves, their lives ending not by weapons but from fright.

The rifle fire and artillery barrages were unending; flares lit up the sky so brilliantly we could barely open our eyes.

As dawn broke, the helmeted soldiers threw up their arms in surrender.

On the first morning of 1948, the five members of our family, plus my goat, cautiously crossed the frozen Flood Dragon River and crawled up the opposite bank. Sha Zaohua and I helped First Sister drag the cart to the top, where we stood and gazed out at the patches of shattered ice, where artillery shells had landed, and at the water gushing out of the holes; as we listened to the crisp sound of ice cracking, we were thankful that none of us had fallen in. Sunlight fell on the battleground north of the river, where the smell of gunpowder lingered on; shouts, whoops of delight, and an occasional burst of gunfire kept the place alive. Fallen helmets looked like toadstools, and I was reminded of Big and Little Mute, whom Mother had placed in a bomb crater, where they lay uncovered, even by dirt. I told myself to turn and look toward our village, which had somehow avoided being reduced to rubble – a true miracle. The church was still standing, as was the mill house. Half of the tiled buildings in the Sima compound had been leveled, but our buildings were still standing, marred only by a hole from one of the artillery shells in the roof of the main house. We exchanged glances as we walked into the yard, as if we were all strangers. But then there were hugs all around, before we broke down and cried, Mother leading the way.

The sound of our crying was abruptly drowned out by the precious weeping of Sima Liang. We looked up and spotted him crouching in an apricot tree, looking like a wild animal. A dog pelt was draped over his shoulders. When Mother reached out to him, he leaped out of the tree like a puff of smoke and threw himself into her arms.