7

grandma, carrying baskets of fistcakes on the pole over her shoulder, and wang wenyi’s wife,carrying two pails of mungbean soup, rushed towards the bridge across the black water river.

though they had planned at first to head southeast through the sorghum field, they found thegoing too hard. ‘let’s take the road, sister-in-law,’ grandma suggested. ‘the long way round isfastest.’

they were like high-flying birds making good headway through the open sky. grandma hadput on a scarlet jacket and oiled her hair until it glistened like ebony. wang’s wife, a vigorous butdiminutive woman, was nimble on her feet. back when commander yu was recruiting troops,she had brought wenyi over to the house and asked grandma to speak to commander yu to signhim up as a guerrilla. grandma had promised she would, and commander yu had taken him onfor her sake.

‘are you afraid of dying?’ commander yu had asked him.

‘yes.’

‘when he says yes he means no, commander,’ wang’s wife had explained. ‘japanese planesbombed our three sons into pulp.’

wang wenyi was not cut out to be a soldier. his reactions were slow, and he couldn’t tell hisright from his left. during marching drills on the parade ground, he was hit by adjutant renmore times than you could count. his wife had an idea: he would carry a sorghum stem in hisright hand, so when he heard a right-turn command he’d turn in that direction. since he had noweapon, grandma gave him our fowling piece.

when the women reached the bank of the twisting black water river they headed south,without stopping to enjoy the chrysanthemums on the bank or the dense thickets of blood-redsorghum beyond it. wang wenyi’s wife had lived a life of suffering, grandma one of privilege.

grandma was drenched with sweat, wang wenyi’s wife was as dry as a bone.

father had since returned to the bridgehead, where he reported to commander yu that thefistcakes would be there soon. commander yu patted him on the head for a job well done. mostof the soldiers lay around the sorghum field, soaking up the sun. growing fidgety withimpatience, father strolled over to the field west of the road to see what mute and his troops wereup to. mute was still honing his knife, so father stopped in front of him, his hand resting on thebrowning at his belt, a victor’s smile on his face. mute looked up and grinned broadly.

father presumed that the four linked rakes blocking the road, their teeth pointing skyward,must have reached the limits of their patience. the stone bridge spanning the river looked like aninvalid just beginning his recovery. father walked up to the dike and sat down, looking first east,then west, then to the river flowing beneath him, and finally to some wild ducks. the river wasbeautiful, owing to its profusion of living plants and tiny whitecaps, each filled with mystery. hespotted piles of white bones resting in thickets of reeds, and remembered our two big blackmules.

in the spring, throngs of rabbits run wild in the fields. grandma rides her mule, rifle in hand, asshe hunts rabbits, with father sitting behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist. frightenedby the mule, the rabbits fall easy prey to grandma’s shots. she invariably returns home with astring of rabbits around the mule’s neck. a steel pellet once lodged between two of her back teethwhen she was eating wild rabbit, and no amount of prying could dislodge it.

father watched a column of dark red ants transport mud pebbles across the dike. when he laida clod of earth in their way, they strained to climb over it instead of skirting it. he picked it upand heaved it into the river, where it broke the surface without a sound. now that the sun wasoverhead, a fishy smell drifted over on the hot air. bright glimmers of light flashed everywhereand made the area sizzle. it seemed to father that the space between heaven and earth was filledwith the red dust of sorghum and the fragrance of sorghum wine. he stretched out on the dike,face up, and in that moment his heart leaped into his throat; later on he realised that patience isalways rewarded, and that the consequences of his waiting were perfectly common, ordinary,casual, and natural. for he had spotted four strange dark- green, beetlelike objects crawlingnoiselessly towards him on the highway that cut through the sorghum fields.

‘trucks,’ he muttered ambiguously. he was ignored.

‘jap trucks!’ he scrambled to his feet, panic- stricken, and stared at the trucks streakingtowards him like meteors, trailing long dark tails and preceded by crackling, swayingincandescent rays of light.

‘here come the trucks!’ his words were a sword that decapitated the men with a single stroke.

a dull silence settled over the sorghum field.

‘men,’ commander yu roared joyfully, ‘they’re here after all. get ready. and don’t fire until igive the order.’

on the west side of the road mute jumped to his feet and slapped himself on the hip. dozens ofguerrillas crouched on the slope, weapons ready. they could hear the roar of the engines. fatherlay at commander yu’s side, gripping the heavy browning so tightly that his wrist was soon hotand tingly, his palm sticky with sweat. the fleshy place between his thumb and forefingertwitched once, and was soon racked with spasms. in amazement, he watched the almond-sizedspot jump rhythmically, like a chick trying to break out of its egg. he wanted to stop it, but wassqueezing so tightly his arm began to tremble. commander yu laid his hand on father’s back,and the twitch stopped. he switched the browning to his left hand, but the muscles of his righthand were so cramped it seemed forever before he could straighten his fingers.

the fast-approaching trucks were getting larger and larger, the eyes in front, as large as horsehooves, sweeping the area with their white rays. their revving engines sounded like the windbefore a downpour. having never actually seen a truck before, father assumed that these strangecreatures survived on grass or some sort of fodder, and that they drank water or blood. theymoved faster than our two strong, spindly-legged mules; the moon-shaped tiers spun so fast theysent clouds of yellow dust soaring into the air. as they neared the stone bridge, the lead truckslowed down, allowing the clouds of dust to catch up and settle over the hood, obsuring thetwenty or more khaki-clad men in the bed, shiny steel pots on their heads. father subsequentlylearned that these pots were called ‘helmets’. (in 1958, during the backyard-furnace campaign ofthe great leap forward, when our wok was confiscated, my elder brother swiped a helmet froma pile of metal and brought it home to use as a cookpot. father watched in fascination as thehelmet changed colour in the smoke and fire.)the two trucks in the middle were stacked with small mountains of white sacks; the onebringing up the rear, like the one in front, was loaded with twenty or more japanese soldiers.

they had nearly reached the dike, and their tyres, spinning more slowly now, appearedswollen and awkward. the square nose of the lead truck reminded father of the head of anenormous locust. as the yellow dust began to settle, loud farts created a dark-blue mist at therear.

father scrunched his head down as a chill the likes of which he’d never known worked its wayup from his feet to his belly. he shifted his buttocks back and forth to keep from wetting hispants. ‘don’t move, you little shit!’ commander yu complained sternly.

feeling as though his bladder were about to burst, father got permission to crawl down andpee.

once he had retreated into the sorghum field he released a mighty stream the colour of redsorghum, which stung the head of his pecker as it gushed forth. enormously relieved when hehad finished, he glanced casually at the guerrillas’ faces, whose expressions made them appear asmalevolent and scary as temple icons. wang wenyi’s tongue poked out between his lips; hisstaring eyeballs seemed frozen, like a lizard’s.

the trucks, huge beasts on the prowl, held their breath as they crept forward. somethingaromatic struck father’s nostrils. just then grandma, in her sweat-stained red silk jacket, and thepanting wife of wang wenyi appeared on the dike of the meandering black water river.

grandma with her baskets of fistcakes and wang wenyi’s wife with her pails of mung-beansoup gazed at the miserable stone bridge across the black water river, feeling very much atease. grandma turned to wang’s wife and said with relief, ‘we made it, sister-in-law.’ eversince her marriage, grandma had lived a life of ease and comfort and the carrying pole, with itsheavy load of fistcakes, dug deeply into her delicate shoulder, leaving a dark-purple bruise thatwould accompany her as she departed this world and travelled to the kingdom of heaven. thebruise would be the glorious symbol of a heroic figure from the war of resistance.

father was the first to see her. while the others were following the slow progress of the truckswith unblinking eyes, some secret force told him to look to the west, where he spotted herfloating towards them like a gorgeous red butterfly. ‘mom –’

his shout was like a command: a hail of bullets tore through the air from three machine gunsmounted on the japanese trucks. the sound was dull and muted, like the gloomy barking of dogson a rainy night. father watched as two shells opened holes in the breast of grandma’s jacket.

she cried out in ecstasy, then crumpled to the ground, her carrying pole falling across her back.

one of the baskets of fistcakes rolled down the southern slope of the dike, the other down thenorthern slope. snow-white cakes, green onions, and diced eggs were scattered in the grass onboth sides of the dike.

after grandma fell, a mixture of red and yellow fluid from the boxy skull of wang wenyi’swife sprayed the area all the way to the sorghum stalks beside the dike. father watched thediminutive woman stagger backward as the bullet hit her, then topple down the southern slope ofthe dike and roll into the water. the contents of one pail of mung-bean soup spilled onto theground, followed by the second, like the blood of heroes. the first pail clanked down the dikeinto the black water river, then bobbed to the surface. it floated down past mute, banged one ortwo times into a stanchion, then was picked up by the current and carried past commander yu,past my father, past wang wenyi, past fang six and fang seven.

‘mom –’ father screamed as though his guts were being ripped out as he leaped to the top ofthe dike. commander yu tried to grab him, but was too late. ‘come back here!’ he bellowed.

father didn’t hear the command, he didn’t hear anything. his skinny little frame flew along thenarrow ridge of the dike, shimmering in the sun’s rays. he threw down his browning pistol,which landed amid the torn leaves of a golden bitterweed. he ran like the wind, his arms thrustout in front like wings, as he ran towards grandma. the dike was still, but dust swirled noisily;the glimmering water stopped flowing. the sorghum beyond the dike remained dignified andsolemn. father was still running along the dike: father was a giant, father was magnificent,father was gorgeous. he screamed at the top of his lungs: ‘mom – mom – mom –’ a singleword drenched with human blood and tears, with deep familial love, with the loftiest of causes.

when he reached the end of the eastern dike, he jumped over the rake barrier and scrambled upthe western bank. beneath the dike, the stony face of mute sped by.

father threw himself down on grandma and called out ‘mom!’ one more time. she lay facedown on the ground, pressed against the wild grass. the aroma of sorghum wine seeped fromtwo exit wounds in her back. father gripped her shoulders and rolled her over. there were nowounds on her face, which looked the same as always. not a hair was out of place; her fringeneatly covered her forehead; her brows drooped slightly. her eyes were half open; the lips on herpale face showed up bright-red. father grasped her warm hand and called ‘mom!’ yet anothertime. she opened her eyes wide as a smile of supreme innocence spread across her face. shereached out to him.

the idling engines of the jap trucks, which had stopped at the bridgehead, revvedintermittently.

a tall figure appeared briefly on the dike to drag father and grandma down off the top. it wasmute, to his everlasting credit. before father had a chance to get his bearings, another gale ofbullets truncated and smashed countless stalks of sorghum.

the four trucks closed up ranks just beyond the bridge, then stopped. eight machine gunsmounted on the first and last trucks were spraying so many bullets they formed hard ribbons ofcrisscrossing light that spread like broken fans, sometimes to the east of the road, sometimes tothe west. sorghum stalks wailed in concert, their shattered, severed limbs drooping low orarching high into the air. bullets raised puffs of yellow dust on the dike and produced a tattoo ofmuffled thuds.

the soldiers on the outer slopes flattened themselves against the wild grass and black dirt,keeping perfectly still. the machine guns strafed the area for about three minutes, then stoppedas abruptly as they had begun. the ground around the trucks was littered with the golden flashesof spent casings.

‘hold your fire,’ commander yu ordered softly.

the japs were silent. thin wisps of gunsmoke floated above the river, carried eastward bygentle air currents.

father told me that in that moment of absolute quiet wang wenyi stumbled up onto the dike,where he stood stock-still, fowling piece in hand, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the picture ofgreat suffering. ‘mother of my children!’ he shrieked. before he could take another step, dozensof machine-gun shells ripped a nearly transparent crescent moon in his belly. gut-stained bulletstore wetly through the air above commander yu’s head.

wang wenyi toppled off the dike and rolled into the water directly opposite the body of hiswife. his heart was still beating, and there wasn’t a mark on his head or face; a sense of perfectunderstanding flooded his mind.

father once told me that wang wenyi’s wife had fed her three sons so well they grew upchubby, lively, and flourishing. one day they went out to tend the sorghum, leaving their sonsbehind to play in the yard. a japanese biplane streaked through the air above their house, makinga strange growling sound as it laid a single egg, a direct hit on wang wenyi’s yard, blowing allthree children to bits that flew up to the eaves, were draped on the branches of trees, stained thewall.

. . . on the day commander yu raised the flag of resistance against the japanese, wang wenyiwas brought over by his wife.

gnashing his teeth with rage, commander yu glared down at wang wenyi, half of whosehead lay submerged in the river. ‘don’t any of you move!’ he snarled in a low voice.