7

the first thing father saw after granddad shook him awake was a long, coiling dragon comingstraight for them as though on wings. bold howls rose from beneath upraised torches. fatherwondered how this wriggling line of torches could have so deeply moved a man like granddad,who could kill without batting an eye. he was weeping openly. ‘douguan,’ he mumbled betweensobs, ‘my son?.?.?. our fellow villagers are coming.?.?.?.’

several hundred villagers – men and women, boys and girls – crowded round. those notholding torches were armed with hoes, rakes, and clubs. father’s best friends squeezed up to thefront, holding torches made of sorghum stalks that were tipped with cotton wadding dipped inbean oil.

‘commander yu, you won the battle!’

‘commander yu, we have slaughtered cattle, pigs, and sheep for a feast for you and yourmen.’

granddad fell to his knees in front of the solemn, sacred torches, which lit up the meanderingriver and the vast, mighty sorghum. ‘fellow villagers,’ he said in a trembling voice, ‘i, yuzhan’ao, should be condemned for all time for being duped by pocky leng’s treachery. mymen?.?.?. all lost in the fight!’

the torches closed in around him, smoke rose in the air, flames flickered uneasily, and dropsof burning oil sizzled as they fell to the ground like red thread. red cinders in a floral patterncovered the dike. a fox in the sorghum field howled. fish, attracted by the light, schooled justbelow the surface. the people were speechless. amid the crackling of flames, a thunderoussound came rolling towards them from some distant spot in the field.

an old man, his face dark, his beard white, one eye much larger than the other, handed historch to the man beside him, bent down, and slipped his arms under my granddad’s. ‘get up,commander yu, get up, get up.’

‘get up, commander yu,’ the villagers echoed, ‘get up, get up.’

granddad rose slowly to his feet, as the heat from the old man’s hands warmed the muscles ofhis arms. ‘fellow villagers,’ he said, ‘let’s take a look around.’

the torchbearers fell in behind granddad and father, the flames lighting up the blurry riverbedand the sorghum fields all the way up to the battleground near the bridge. the burned-out truckscast eerie shadows. corpses strewn across the battlefield gave off an overpowering stench ofblood, which merged with the smell of scorched metal, of the sorghum that served as a vastbackdrop, and of the river, so far from its source.

women began to wail as drops of burning oil fell from the torches onto the people’s hands andfeet. the men’s faces looked like steel fresh from the furnace. the white stone bridge had turnedscarlet.

the old man with the dark face and white beard shouted, ‘what are you crying for? this was agreat victory! there are four hundred million of us chinese. if we take on the japs, one on one,how do you think their little country will fare? if one hundred million of us fought them to thedeath, they’d be wiped out, but there’d still be three hundred million of us. that makes us thevictors, doesn’t it? commander yu , this was a crushing victory!’

‘old uncle, you’re just saying that to make me feel good.’

‘no, commander yu, it really was a great victory. give the order; tell us what to do. chinamay have nothing else, but it’s got plenty of people.’

granddad straightened up. ‘you people, gather up the bodies of our fallen comrades!’

the villagers spread out and gathered up the bodies from the sorghum fields on both sides ofthe highway, then laid them out on the dike on the western edge of the bridge, heads facingsouth, feet north. pulling father along behind him, granddad walked down the column of bodies,counting them. wang wenyi, wang’s wife, fang six, fang seven, bugler liu, consumptivefour?.?.?. one face after another. tears ran down granddad’s deeply lined face like rivers ofmolten steel in the light of the torches.

‘what about mute?’ granddad asked. ‘douguan, did you see uncle mute?’

the image of mute’s razor-sharp sabre knife slicing off the jap’s head, and of the head sailing,screaming, through the air, flashed into father’s mind. ‘on the truck,’ he said.

the torches encircled one of the trucks. three men climbed onto it as granddad ran up. theylifted mute’s body over the railing and onto granddad’s back. one man held mute’s head,another his legs, and they staggered up the dike with their load, to lay it on the easternmost edgeof the grisly column. mute, bent at the waist, was still gripping his blood-spattered sabre knife.

his lifeless eyes were staring, his mouth open, as though frozen on a scream.

granddad knelt and pressed down on mute’s knees and chest; father heard the dead man’sspine groan and crack as his body straightened out. granddad tried to wrench the sword free, butthe death grip thwarted his attempts. he brought the arm down so that the sword lay alongsidemute’s leg. one of the women knelt and rubbed mute’s eyes. ‘brother,’ she said, ‘close youreyes, close them now. commander yu will avenge your death.?.?.?.’

‘dad, mom’s still in the field.?.?.?.’ father began to weep.

with a wave of his hand, granddad said, ‘you go.?.?.?. take some people with you and carryher back.?.?.?.’

father darted into the sorghum field, followed by several villagers with torches, whose burningoil brushed the dense stalks. the aggrieved dry leaves crackled and burned when they weresplattered, and as the fires spread, the stalks bowed their heavy heads and wept hoarsely.

father parted the sorghum to reveal the body of grandma, lying on her back and facing theremote, inimitable sky above northeast gaomi township, filled with the spirits of countless stars.

even in death her face was as lovely as jade, her parted lips revealing a line of clean teeth inlaidwith pearls of sorghum seeds, placed there by the emerald beaks of white doves.

‘carry her back,’ granddad said.

a group of young women lifted her up. with torches casting a wide net of light along theroute, the sorghum field turned into a fairyland, and each member of the procession wassurrounded by an eerie halo of light.

one woman carried grandma’s body onto the dike and laid it at the westernmost end of thecorpses.

the old man with the white beard asked, ‘commander yu, where will we find enough coffinsfor them all?’

granddad thought for a moment. ‘we won’t carry them back,’ he said finally, ‘and we don’tneed coffins. for now, we’ll bury them in the sorghum field. once i’ve rallied our forces, i’llcome back and give them a proper send-off.’

the old man sent a group back to weave additional torches, since they would be burying thedead through the night. ‘while you’re at it,’ granddad added, ‘bring some draught animals so wecan tow that truck back with us, and chop down enough sorghum stalks to cover the bodies andline the bottoms of the graves before filling them in with dirt.’

grandma was the last to be interred. once again her body was enshrouded in sorghum. asfather watched the final stalk hide her face, his heart cried out in pain, never to be whole againthroughout his long life. granddad tossed in the first spadeful of dirt. the loose clods of blackearth thudded against the layer of sorghum like an exploding grenade shattering the surroundingstillness with its lethal shrapnel. father’s heart wept blood.

grandma’s grave mound was the fifty-first in the field. ‘fellow villagers,’ the old man said, ‘onyour knees!’

the village elders fell to their knees before the line of graves, the fields around them vibratingwith the sound of weeping. the torches were beginning to die out. just then a star fell from thesouthern sky, its brilliance not fading from view until it had passed below the tips of sorghum.

it was nearly dawn when the old torches were replaced by new ones. a milky gleam graduallypenetrated the fog over the river. the dozen or so draught animals grazed noisily on the sorghumstalks and chewed the fallen ears of grain.

granddad ordered the people to remove the linked rakes from the road and push the first truckacross the highway and into the ditch on the eastern shoulder. when it was done, he picked up ashotgun, aimed at the gas tank, and fired, filling it with holes through which the gasoline spurtedout. then, taking a torch, he stepped back, aimed carefully, and flung it. a towering white flameshot into the air, igniting the frame and quickly turning the truck into a pile of twisted metal.

the villagers put their shoulders to the undamaged truck loaded with rice, pushing it across thebridge and onto the highway, then tipped the burned-out hulk of the third truck into the river. thegas tank of the fourth truck, which had retreated to the road south of the bridge, was also blastedby the shotgun and set afire, sending more flames shooting up into the heavens. all that remainedon the bridge were piles of cinders. flames rose into the sky to the north and south of the river,punctuated by the occasional crack of an exploding shell. the jap corpses, burned to an oilycrisp, added the stench of roasted flesh to the acrid smell in the air. the people’s throats itched,their stomachs churned.

‘what’ll we do with their bodies, commander yu?’ the old man asked.

‘if we bury them, they’ll stink up our soil! if we burn them, they’ll foul our air! dump theminto the river and let them float back home.’

thirty or more corpses were dragged up onto the bridge, including the old jap, who had beenstripped of his general’s uniform by the leng detachment soldiers.

‘you women look away,’ granddad announced.

he took out his short sword, split open the crotches of the jap soldiers’ pants, and sliced offtheir genitalia. then he ordered a couple of the coarser men to stuff the things into the mouths oftheir owners. finally, working in pairs, the men picked up the japanese soldiers – basicallydecent men, perhaps, maybe handsome at one time, virtually all in the prime of their youth – and,one two three, heaved them over the side. ‘jap dogs,’ they shouted, ‘go back home!’ thejapanese soldiers flew through the air, carrying the family jewels in their mouths, and landed inthe river with a splash, a whole school of them caught up in the eastward flow.

the faint rays of dawn found the villagers too exhausted to move. the fires along the bankswere dying out beneath the still-dark sky. granddad told the villagers to hitch the animals up tothe front bumper of the undamaged rice truck.

the animals strained, the ropes were yanked taut, and the axles groaned as the truck crawledforward like a clumsy beetle. the front wheels kept veering from side to side, so granddad haltedthe animals, opened the door, and slid into the cab to try his hand at steering. the ropes snappedtaut as the animals strained forward again, and granddad wrestled with the steering wheel untilhe began to get the hang of it. now the truck was heading straight, the terrified villagers fell inbehind it. keeping one hand on the steering wheel, granddad felt around the dashboard with theother. he snapped on a switch, sending two rays of light shooting out the front.

‘it opened its eyes!’ someone shouted from behind him.

the headlights lit up the road ahead as well as the hairs on the animals’ backs. feeling verygood about things, granddad pushed and turned and twisted and pulled every button and switchand lever and knob he could find. a shrill noise rang out, and the horn began to blare. so youhaven’t lost your voice! granddad was thinking. deciding to have a little fun, he turned theignition switch; a rumbling emerged from its belly as the truck shot forward crazily, knockingdown mules and oxen, and bumping horses and donkeys out of the way, scaring granddad sobadly he was drenched with sweat, front and back. having climbed onto the tiger’s back, hedidn’t know how to get down.

the dumbstruck villagers watched the truck knock the animals down and drag them along. ittravelled a few dozen yards before careening into a ditch west of the road and coming to ashuddering halt, the raised wheels on one side spinning like windmills. granddad smashed theglass and climbed out, his hands and face smeared with blood.

he stood looking at the demonic creature, a grim smile on his face.

after the villagers had unloaded the rice from the back of the remaining truck, granddadblasted holes in the gas tank and once again ignited the gasoline with a torch. the flames lickedthe heavens.