2when the japanese troops withdrew, the full moon, thin as a paper cutout, rose in the sky abovethe tips of the sorghum stalks, which had undergone such suffering. grain fell sporadically likeglistening tears. a sweet odour grew heavy in the air; the dark soil of the southern edge of ourvillage had been thoroughly soaked by human blood. lights from fires in the village curled likefoxtails, as occasional pops, like the crackling of dry wood, momentarily filled the air with acharred odour that merged with the stifling stench of blood.
the wound on granddad’s arm had turned worse, the scabs cracking and releasing a rotting,oozing mixture of dark blood and white pus. he told father to squeeze the area around thewound. fearfully, father placed his icy fingers on the discoloured skin around the suppuratingwound and squeezed, forcing out a string of air bubbles that released the putrid smell of pickledvegetables. granddad picked up a piece of yellow spirit currency that had been weighted downby a clod of earth at the head of a nearby gravesite and told father to smear some of the saltywhite powder from the sorghum stalks on it. then he removed the head of a cartridge with histeeth and poured the greenish gunpowder onto the paper, mixed it with the white sorghumpowder, and took a pinch with his fingers to daub on the open wound.
‘dad,’ father said, ‘shall i mix some soil into it?’
granddad thought for a moment. ‘sure, why not?’
father bent down and picked up a clod of dark earth near the roots of a sorghum stalk,crumbled it in his fingers, and spread it on the paper. after granddad mixed the three substancestogether and covered the wound with them, paper and all, father wrapped a filthy strip ofbandage cloth around it and tied it tight.
‘does that make it feel better, dad?’
granddad moved his arm back and forth. ‘much better, douguan. an elixir like this will workon any wound, no matter how serious.’
‘dad, if we’d had something like that for mother, she wouldn’t have died, would she?’
‘no, she wouldn’t have.?.?.?.’ granddad’s face clouded.
‘dad, wouldn’t it’ve been great if you’d told me about this before? mother was bleeding somuch i kept packing earth on the wounds, but that only stopped it for a while. if i’d known toadd some white sorghum powder and gunpowder, everything would have been fine.?.?.?.’
all the while father was rambling, granddad was loading his pistol. japanese mortar fireraised puffs of hot yellow smoke all up and down the village wall.
since father’s browning pistol lay under the belly of the fallen horse, during the final battle ofthe afternoon he used a japanese rifle nearly as tall as he was; granddad used his germanautomatic, firing it so rapidly it spent its youth and was ready for the trash heap. although battlefires still lit up the sky above the village, an aura of peace and quiet had settled over the sorghumfields.
father followed granddad, dragging his rifle behind him as they circled the site of themassacre. the blood-soaked earth had the consistency of liquid clay under the weight of theirfootsteps; bodies of the dead merged with the wreckage of sorghum stalks. moonlight danced onpools of blood, and hideous scenes of dismemberment swept away the final moments of father’syouth. tortured moans emerged from the field of sorghum, and here and there among the bodiessome movement appeared. father was burning to ask granddad to save those fellow villagerswho were still alive, but when he saw the pale, expressionless look on his father’s bronze face,the words stuck in his throat.
during the most critical moments, father was always slightly more alert than granddad,perhaps because he concentrated on surface phenomena; superficial thought seems ideally suitedto guerrilla fighting. at that moment, granddad looked benumbed; his thoughts were riveted on asingle point, which might have been a twisted face, or a shattered rifle, or a single spent bullet.
he was blind to all other sights, deaf to all other sounds. this problem – or characteristic – of hiswould grow more pronounced over the coming decade. he returned to china from the mountainsof hokkaido with an unfathomable depth in his eyes, gazing at things as though he could willthem to combust spontaneously.
father never achieved this degree of philosophical depth. in 1957, after untold hardships, whenhe finally emerged from the burrow mother had dug for him, his eyes had the same look as in hisyouth: lively, perplexed, capricious. he never did figure out the relationship between men andpolitics or society or war, even though he had been spun so violently on the wheel of battle. hewas forever trying to squeeze the light of his nature through the chinks in his body armour.
granddad and father circled the site of the massacre a dozen times, until father said tearfully,‘dad?.?.?. i can’t walk any more.?.?.?.’
granddad’s robot movements stopped; taking father’s hand, he backed up ten paces and satdown on a patch of solid, dry earth. the cheerless and lonely sorghum field was highlighted bythe crackle of fires in the village. weak golden flames danced fitfully beneath the silverymoonlight. after sitting there for a moment, granddad fell backward like a capsized wall, andfather laid his head on granddad’s belly, where he fell into a hazy sleep. he could feelgranddad’s feverish hand stroking his head, which sent his thoughts back nearly a dozen years,to when he was suckling at grandma’s breast.
he was four at the time, and growing tired of the yellowed nipple that was always thrust into hismouth. having begun to hate its sour hardness, he gazed up into the look of rapture in grandma’sface with a murderous glint in his eyes and bit down as hard as he could. he felt the contractionin grandma’s breast as her body jerked backward. trickles of a sweet liquid warmed the cornersof his mouth, until grandma gave him a swat on the bottom and pushed him away. he fell to theground, his eyes on the drops of fresh red blood dripping from the tip of grandma’s pendulousbreast. he whimpered, but his eyes were dry. grandma, on the other hand, was crying bitterly,her shoulders heaving, her face bathed in tears. she lashed out at him, calling him a wolf cub, asmean as his wolf of a father.
later on he learned that that was the year granddad, who loved grandma dearly, had fallen inlove with the hired girl, passion, who had grown into a bright- eyed young woman. at themoment when father bit grandma, granddad, who had grown tired of her jealousy, was livingwith passion in a house he’d bought in a neighbouring village. everyone said that this secondgrandma of mine was no economy lantern, and that grandma was afraid of her, but this issomething i’ll clear up later. second grandma eventually had a girl by granddad. in 1938,japanese soldiers murdered this young aunt of mine with a bayonet, then gang-raped secondgrandma – this, too, i’ll clear up later.
granddad and father were exhausted. the wound throbbed in granddad’s arm, which seemed tobe on fire. father’s feet had swollen until his cloth shoes nearly split their seams, and hefantasised about the exquisite pleasure of airing the rotting skin of his feet in the moonlight. buthe didn’t have the strength to sit up and take off his shoes. instead, he rolled over and rested hishead on granddad’s hard stomach so he could look up into the starry night and let the moon’srays light up his face. he could hear the murmuring flow of the black water river and see blackclouds gather in the sky above him. he remembered uncle arhat’s saying once that, when themilky way lay horizontally across the sky, autumn rains would fall. he had only really seenautumn water once in his life.
the sorghum was ready for harvest when the black water river rose and burst its banks,flooding both the fields and the village. the stalks strained to keep their heads above water; ratsand snakes scurried and slithered up them to escape drowning. father had gone with uncle arhatto the wall, which the villagers were reinforcing, and gazed uneasily at the yellow water rushingtowards him. the villagers made rafts from kindling and paddled out to the fields to hack off theears of grain, which were already sprouting new green buds. bundles of soaked deep-red andemerald-green ears of sorghum weighted down the rafts so much it’s a wonder they didn’t sink.
the dark, gaunt men, barefoot and bare-chested, wearing conical straw hats, stood with their legsakimbo on the rafts, poling with all their strength as they rocked from side to side.
the water in the village was knee-high, covering the legs of livestock, whose waste floated onthe surface. in the dying rays of the autumn sun, the water shone like liquefied metal; tips ofsorghum stalks too far away to be harvested formed a canopy of golden red just above therippling surface, over which flocks of wild geese flew. father could see a bright, broad body ofwater flowing slowly through the densest patch of red sorghum, in sharp contrast to the muddy,stagnant water around him; it was, he knew, the black water river. on one of the rafts lay asilver-bellied, green-backed grass carp, a long, thin sorghum stalk stuck through its gills. thefarmer proudly held it up to show the people on the wall; it was nearly half as tall as he was.
blood oozed from its gills, and its mouth was open as it looked at my father with dull, sorrowfuleyes.
father was thinking about how uncle arhat had bought a fish from a farmer once, and howgrandma had scraped the scales from its belly, then made soup out of it; just thinking about thatdelicious soup gave him an appetite. he sat up. ‘dad,’ he said, ‘aren’t you hungry? i am. can youfind me something to eat? i’m starving.?.?.?.’
granddad sat up and fished around in his belt until he found a bullet, which he inserted into thecylinder; then he snapped it shut, sending the bullet into the chamber. he pulled the trigger, andthere was a loud crack. ‘douguan,’ he said, ‘let’s go find your mother.?.?.?.’
‘no, dad,’ father replied in a high-pitched, frightened voice, ‘mother’s dead. but we’re stillalive, and i’m hungry. let’s get something to eat.’
father pulled granddad to his feet. ‘where?’ granddad mumbled. ‘where can we go?’ sofather led him by the hand into the sorghum field, where they walked in a crooked line, asthough their objective was the moon, hanging high and icy in the sky.
a growl emerged from the field of corpses. granddad and father stopped in their tracks andturned to see a dozen pairs of green eyes, like will-o’-the-wisps, and several indigo shadowstumbling on the ground. granddad took out his pistol and fired at two of the green eyes; the howlof a dying dog accompanied the extinguishing of those eyes. granddad fired seven shots in all,and several wounded dogs writhed in agony among the corpses. while he was emptying hispistol into the pack, the uninjured dogs fled into the sorghum field, out of range, where theyhowled furiously at the two humans.
the last couple of bullets from granddad’s pistol had travelled only thirty paces or so beforethudding to the ground. father watched them tumble in the moonlight, so slowly he could havereached out and caught them. and the once crisp crack of the pistol sounded more like thephlegmatic cough of a doddering old man. a tortured, sympathetic expression spread acrossgranddad’s face as he looked down at the weapon in his hand.
‘out of bullets, dad?’
the five hundred bullets they’d brought back from town in the goat’s belly had been used upin a matter of hours. the pistol had aged overnight, and granddad came to the painful realisationthat it was no longer capable of carrying out his wishes; time for them to part ways.
holding the gun out in front of him, he carefully studied the muted reflection of the moonlighton the barrel, then loosened his grip and let the gun fall heavily to the ground.
the green- eyed dogs returned to the corpses, timidly at first. but their eyes quicklydisappeared, and the moonlight was reflected off rolling waves of bluish fur; granddad andfather could hear the sounds of dogs tearing human bodies with their fangs.
‘let’s go into the village, dad,’ father said.
granddad wavered for a moment, so father tugged on him, and they fell into step.
by then most of the fires in the village had gone out, leaving red-hot cinders that gave off anacrid heat amid the crumbling walls and shattered buildings. hot winds whirled above the villageroads. the murky air was stifling. roofs of houses, their supports burned out beneath them, hadcollapsed in mountains of smoke, dust, and cinders. bodies were strewn atop the village wall andon the roads. a page in the history of our village had been turned. at one time the site had been awasteland covered with brambles, underbrush, and reeds, a paradise for foxes and wild rabbits.
then a few huts appeared, and it became a haven for escaped murderers, drunks, gamblers, whobuilt homes, cultivated the land, and turned it into a paradise for humans, forcing out the foxesand wild rabbits, who set up howls of protest on the eve of their departure. now the village lay inruins; man had created it, and man had destroyed it. it was now a sorrowful paradise, amonument to both grief and joy, built upon ruins. in 1960, when the dark cloud of famine settledover the shandong peninsula, even though i was only four years old i could dimly sense thatnortheast gaomi township had never been anything but a pile of ruins, and that its people hadnever been able to rid their hearts of the shattered buildings, nor would they ever be able to.
that night, after the smoke and sparks from the other houses had died out, our buildings werestill burning, sending skyward green-tinged tongues of flame and the intoxicating aroma of strongwine, released in an instant after all those years. blue roof tiles, deformed by the intense heat,turned scarlet, then leaped into the air through a wall of flames that illuminated granddad’s hair,which had turned three- quarters grey in the space of a week. a roof came crashing down,momentarily blotting out the flames, which then roared out of the rubble, stronger than ever. theloud crash nearly crushed the breath out of father and granddad.
our house, which had sheltered the father and son of the shan family as they grew rich, thenhad sheltered granddad after his murderous deed, then had sheltered grandma, granddad,father, uncle arhat, and all the men who worked for them, a sanctuary for their kindnesses andtheir grievances, had now completed its historical mission. i hated that sanctuary: though it hadsheltered decent emotions, it had also sheltered heinous crimes. father, when you were hiding inthe burrow we dug for you in the floor of my home back in 1957, you recalled those days of yourpast in the unrelenting darkness. on no fewer than 365 occasions, in your mind you saw the roofof your house crash down amid the flames, and wondered what was going through the mind ofyour father, my granddad. so my fantasies were chasing yours while yours were chasinggranddad’s.
as he watched the roof collapse, granddad became as angry as he’d been the day heabandoned grandma and moved to another village to be with his new love, passion. he hadlearned then that grandma had shamelessly taken up with black eye, the leader of anorganisation called the iron society, and at the time he wasn’t sure what filled his heart – loathingor love, pain or anger. when he later returned to grandma’s arms, his feelings for her were soconfused he couldn’t sort them out. in the beginning, his emotional warfare scarred only his ownheart, and grandma’s scarred only her own. finally, they hurt each other. only when grandmasmiled up at him as she lay dead in the sorghum field did he realise the grievous punishment lifehad meted out to him. he loved my father as a magpie loves the last remaining egg in its nest.
but by then it was too late, for fate, cold and calculating, had sentenced him to a cruel end thatwas waiting for him down the road.
‘dad, our house is gone.?.?.?.’ father said.
granddad rubbed father’s head as he stared at the ruins of his home, then took father’s handand began stumbling aimlessly down the road under the waning light of the flames and thewaxing light of the moon.
at the head of the village they heard an old man’s voice: ‘is that you, number three? whydidn’t you bring the oxcart?’
the sound of that voice gave granddad and father such a warm feeling they forgot how tiredthey were and rushed over to see who it was.
a hunched-over elderly man rose to greet them, carefully sizing up granddad with his ancienteyes, nearly touching his face. granddad didn’t like his watchful look and was repulsed by thegreedy stench that came from his mouth.
‘you’re not my number three,’ the old man said unhappily, his head wobbling as he sat downon a pile of loot. there were trunks, cupboards, dining tables, farm tools, harnesses, rippedcomforters, cooking pots, earthenware bowls. he was sitting on a small mountain of stuff andguarding it as a wolf guards its kill. behind him, two calves, three goats, and a mule were tied toa willow tree.
‘you old dog!’ granddad growled through clenched teeth. ‘get the hell out of here!’
the old man rose up on his haunches and said amiably, ‘ah, my brother, let’s not be envious. irisked my life to drag this stuff out of the flames!’
‘i’ll fuck your living mother! climb down from there!’ granddad lashed out angrily.
‘you have no right to talk to me like that. i didn’t do anything to you. you’re the one who’sasking for trouble. what gives you the right to curse me like that?’ he complained.
‘curse you? i’ll goddamn kill you! we’re not in a desperate struggle with japan just so youcan go on a looting binge! you bastard, you old bastard! douguan, where’s your gun?’
‘it’s under the horse’s belly,’ father said.
granddad jumped up onto the mountain of stuff and, with a single kick, sent the old mansprawling onto the ground. he rose to his knees and begged, ‘spare me, eighth route master,spare me!’
‘i’m not with the eighth route army,’ granddad said, ‘or the ninth route. i’m yu zhan’aothe bandit!’
‘spare me, commander yu, spare me! what good would it do to let all this stuff burn? i’m notthe only “potato picker” from the village. those thieves got all the good stuff. i’m too old and tooslow, and all i could find was this junk.’
granddad picked up a wooden table and threw it at the old man’s bald head. he screamed andheld his bleeding scalp as he rolled in the dirt. granddad reached down and picked him up by hiscollar. looking straight into those tortured eyes, he said, ‘our hero, the “potato picker”, thenraised his fist and drove it with a loud crack into the old man’s face, sending him crumpling tothe ground, face up. granddad walked up and kicked him in the face, hard.