5

the time: forty-six years later. the place: the spot where granddad, father, and mother hadfought a heroic battle against a pack of dogs led by the three from our family – blackie, red, andgreen. on one stormy night lightning split open a mass grave where communists, nationalists,commoners, japanese, and puppet troops were buried – a site called all-souls grave – spreadingrotting bones over a ten-yard area, where they were washed clean by the rain and turned a sombrewhite. i was home on summer holiday at the time, and when i heard that all-souls grave hadopened up i rushed over to see for myself, our blue-coated little dog following hard on my heels.

it was still drizzling, and the dog darted in front of me, his paws splashing loudly in the muddypuddles. it wasn’t long before we were in the midst of bones that had been sent flying withexplosive force, and blue ran up to sniff them, quickly shaking his head to show that they didn’tinterest him.

people stood fearfully around the exposed graveyard. i squeezed in among them until i couldsee the skeletons at the bottom of the pit, piles of bones exposed to the sun for the first time in allthose years. i doubt that even the provincial party secretary could have told which of thembelonged to communists, which to nationalists, which to japanese soldiers, which to puppetsoldiers, and which to civilians. the skulls all had the exact same shape, and all had been throwninto the same heap. the scattered raindrops beat a desolate rhythm on the white bones, forcefuland fiendish. skeletons lay on their backs, nearly submerged in the icy water, like fermentingsorghum wine that had been stored up for years.

the villagers picked up the bones that had been scattered around the area and tossed them backin. a momentary dizziness came over me, and when it passed i took another look, discoveringthe skulls of dozens of dogs mixed in with the human heads in the grave. the bottom of the pitwas a shallow blur of white, a sort of code revealing that the history of dogs and the history ofmen are intertwined. i helped pick up the scattered bones, but put on a pair of white gloves just tobe on the safe side. noticing the hateful stares of the villagers, i quickly took them off and stuffedthem into my pants pockets, then walked down the bone-strewn road all the way to the edge ofthe sorghum field, a good hundred yards away.

there in the short green grass, still dripping with water, lay the curved dome of a human skull.

the flat, broad forehead showed that it hadn’t belonged to any ordinary person. i picked it upwith three fingers and had started running back with it when i spotted another muted gleam ofwhite in the grass not far away. this one was a long, narrow skull with several sharp teeth still inits opened mouth; i knew it was one i didn’t have to pick up, for it belonged to the same speciesas the little blue-coated friend tagging along behind me. maybe it had been a wolf. all i knew forsure was that it had been blown over here by the explosive force, for the specks of dirt on itsfreshly cleaned surface proved it had lain in the mass grave for decades. i picked it up anyway.

the villagers were tossing bones stolidly into the grave, some cracking and splitting when theyhit. i tossed in the fragment of the human skull. but when it came to the large canine skull ihesitated. ‘toss it in,’ an old man said; ‘the dogs back then were as good as humans.’ so i tossedit into the open pit. once all-souls grave had been filled in, it looked just as it had before thelightning hit. in order to calm the frightened souls of the dead, mother burned a stack of yellowspirit money at the head of the grave.

after helping fill in the pit, i stayed with her to look down at this resting place of a thousandbodies, and kowtowed three times.

‘it’s been forty-six years,’ mother said. ‘i was fifteen then.’