Red Sorghum
The hot-blooded bearers echoed his shouts. Second Master stood up, thumped Granddad hard on the shoulder, and said with genuine feeling, ‘Zhan’ao, now you’re a man! The seed of Northeast Gaomi Township. The Qi family got where it is by taking advantage of people like us, who earn their living as bearers. If you’ll work together and get that coffin out, the reputation of Northeast Gaomi Township is assured. You can’t buy glory for any amount of money. But don’t forget that, as the descendants of a Qing-dynasty Hanlin scholar, they follow strict decorum. This won’t be easy. If you can’t sleep tonight, stay up and figure out how you’re going to get through those seven gates.’
Before the bearers had left the office, two strangers walked in and announced that they were stewards from the Hanlin scholar’s home, come to enlist the services of the Northeast Gaomi Township bearers.
Once they had stated their purpose, Second Master Cao asked listlessly, ‘How much will you pay?’
‘Five hundred in silver! You won’t see a fee like that many times in your life!’
Second Master Cao tossed his silver water pipe onto the table and sneered. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘we have all the business we need, and second, we’ve got money to burn. Maybe you’d better go find someone else.’
The Qi family stewards smiled knowingly. ‘Proprietor,’ one of them said, ‘we are all businessmen!’
‘Yes,’ Second Master Cao replied, ‘we are. And you will have no trouble finding someone to do the job for that fee.’
He closed his eyes sleepily.
A quick look passed between the two stewards. The one in front spoke up. ‘Proprietor, let’s not beat around the bush. Name your price!’
‘I’m not about to risk the lives of my men for a few silver dollars,’ Second Master Cao replied.
‘Six hundred!’ the steward said. ‘In silver!’
Second Master Cao sat there like a stone.
‘Seven hundred! Seven hundred silver dollars! In business you have to deal in good conscience, proprietor.’
Second Master Cao’s lips curled.
‘Eight hundred, then, and that’s our final offer!’
Second Master Cao’s eyes snapped open. ‘One thousand!’ he said flatly.
The steward’s cheeks puffed out like those of a man with impacted wisdom teeth. He stared at the harsh, unyielding expression on Second Master Cao’s face.
‘Proprietor . . . we don’t have the authority. . . .’
‘Then go back and tell your boss. One thousand. We won’t do it for less.’
‘All right. You’ll have your answer tomorrow.’
The steward rode up from the county town on a lathered horse with purple mane the following morning. The date was settled, and a deposit of five hundred silver dollars handed over, the remainder payable when the coffin had been successfully moved.
Sixty-four bearers rose well before sunrise on the day of the funeral, ate a hearty breakfast, and set out for Jiao City, stepping on starlight. Second Master Cao brought up the rear on his black donkey.
Granddad recalled that the sky that day was dotted with morning stars. The dew was icy, and the steel hook he’d tucked into his waistband kept thumping against his hip bone. Dawn had broken when they reached town, and the streets were already packed with people who had turned out to watch the funeral. When Granddad and the others heard whispers from the crowd, they raised their heads and thrust out their chests, wanting to leave a gallant impression. Deep down, however, they were worried.
The Qi compound sported a row of tile-roofed buildings half a block in length. Granddad and the other men followed the family servants through three gates into a garden filled with snow trees and silver flowers, the ground covered with paper money, and the smoke of incense all around. Few families could match that kind of grandeur.
The steward walked up to Second Master Cao in the company of the head of the household, a man of about fifty with a tiny hooked nose high above a broad mouth on a gaunt face. He glanced at the team of men and, with a nod to Second Master Cao, said, ‘A thousand silver dollars requires an appropriate amount of decorum.’
Second Master Cao returned his nod and followed him through the final gate.
When he emerged from the house, his shiny face had turned ashen and his long-nailed fingers trembled. He called the bearers over to the wall and said with a gnashing of his teeth, ‘We’ve had it, boys!’
‘What’s the problem, Second Master?’ Granddad asked him.
‘Men, the coffin’s as wide as the door, and on top of it there’s a bowl filled to the brim with wine. He says he’ll penalise us a hundred silver dollars for every drop we spill!’
They were speechless. The wails of mourners inside the funeral chamber floated on the air like a song.
‘What should we do, Zhan’ao?’ Second Master Cao asked.
‘This is no time for the chickenhearted,’ Granddad replied. ‘We’ll carry the thing out even if it’s filled with iron balls.’
‘Okay, men,’ Second Master Cao said in a low voice, ‘let’s go. If you get it out, you’re like my own sons. The thousand-dollar fee is all yours. I don’t want any of it!’
‘No more of that kind of talk!’ Granddad said with a quick glance at him.
‘Then let’s get ready,’ Second Master Cao said. ‘Zhan’ao, Sikui, you two man the cable, one in front and one behind. I want twenty of you other men inside, and as soon as the coffin is off the ground, slip under it and prop it on your backs. The rest of you stay out here and move in rhythm as I beat the gong. And men, Cao the Second is in your debt!’ Second Master Cao, normally the tyrant, bowed deeply this time.
The head of the Qi household walked up with a retinue of servants and said, ‘Not so fast. We need to search you first.’
‘What sort of decorum is that?’ Second Master Cao shot back angrily.
‘The decorum of one thousand silver dollars!’ the head of the household replied haughtily.
The Qi family servants removed the steel hooks the men had hidden in their waistbands and tossed them to the ground.
Okay! Granddad thought. Anybody can lift a coffin by using steel hooks. A stirring emotion, like that of a fearless man on the way to his execution, surged into his heart. After cinching his pant cuffs and waistband as tight as he could, he took a deep breath and entered the funeral chamber. The mourners – boys and girls – stopped wailing and stared wide-eyed at the bearers, then at the bowl of wine on top of the coffin. The smoky air was nearly suffocating, and the faces of the living were like hideous floating masks. The ebony coffin of the old Hanlin scholar rested on four stools like a huge boat in drydock.
Granddad uncoiled a thick hempen cable and ran it under the coffin from end to end. The tips were finished with loops of twisted white cotton. The other bearers strung thick, water-soaked cotton ropes under the cable and held on to the ends.
Second Master Cao raised his gong. The sound split the air. Granddad squatted down at the head of the coffin, the most dangerous, the heaviest, the most glorious spot of all. The thick cotton rope pulled hard against his neck and shoulders, and he realised how heavy the coffin was before he’d even straightened up.
Second Master Cao banged his gong three more times. A shout of ‘Heave!’ cleaved the air.
Granddad took a deep breath and held it, sending all his energy and strength down to his knees. He dimly heard Second Master Cao’s command; dazed though he was, he forced the strength concentrated in his knees to burst forth, fantasising that the coffin containing the corpse of the Hanlin scholar had begun to levitate and float atop the curling incense smoke like a ship on the ocean. The fantasy was shattered by the pressure of the brick floor on his buttocks and sharp pains up and down his backbone.
The enormous coffin remained anchored in place like a tree with deep roots. Second Master Cao nearly fainted when he saw his bearers crumple to the floor like sparrows that had smashed into windows. He knew they were finished. The curtain had come crashing down
on this drama! There was the vigorous, energetic Yu Zhan’ao, sitting on the floor like an old woman holding a dead infant. There was no mistaking it now: the drama had ended in complete failure.
Granddad imagined the mocking laughter of the Hanlin scholar in his tomb of shifting quicksilver.
‘Men,’ Second Master Cao said, ‘you have to carry it out . . . not for my sake . . . for Northeast Gaomi Township. . . .’
Bong! Bong! This time the sound of the gong nearly tore Granddad’s heart to shreds.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he began raising himself up, crazily, suicidally (amid the chaos of lifting the coffin, Second Master Cao saw the bearer called Little Rooster quickly thrust his lips into the bowl on top of the coffin and take a big gulp of wine). With a tremor, the coffin rose up off the stools. The deathly stillness of the room was broken only by the cracking of human joints.
Granddad had no way of knowing that his face was as pale as death. All he knew was that the thick cotton rope was strangling him, that his neck was about to snap, and that his vertebrae were compressed until they must have looked like flattened hawthorns. When he found he was unable to straighten up, it took only a split second for despair to undermine his resolve, and his knees began to buckle like molten steel. The quicksilver shifted, causing the head of the coffin to press down even harder on him. The bowl on top sloped to one side, the colourless wine inside touching the rim and threatening to overflow. Members of the Qi family stared at it wide-eyed.
Second Master Cao gave Granddad a vicious slap.
Granddad would later recall that the slap had set his ears ringing, and that all feeling in his waist, legs, shoulders, and neck seemed to be squeezed out of his consciousness, as though claimed by some unknown spirit. A curtain of black gauze fell in front of his eyes, and he straightened up, raising the coffin more than three feet off the ground. Six bearers immediately slipped under the coffin on all fours and supported it on their backs. Granddad finally released a mouthful of sticky breath. The breath that followed seemed to him warm and gentle as it rose slowly and passed through his throat. . . .
The coffin was lugged past all seven gates and placed in a bright-blue great canopy.
As soon as the thick white cloth rope fell from Granddad’s back, he forced his mouth open, and streams of scarlet blood spurted from his mouth and nostrils. . . .
3
DRESSED IN MOURNING clothes, Father stood facing southwest on a high bench and thumped the waxwood butt of his rifle on the ground as he shouted: ‘Mother – Mother – head southwest – a broad highway – a long treasure boat – a fleet-footed steed – lots of travelling money – Mother – rest in sweetness – buy off your pain –’
The funeral master had ordered him to sing this send-off song three times, since only a loved one’s calls can guide the spirit to the southwestern paradise. But he got through it only once before choking on hot, sour tears of grief. Another long-drawn-out ‘Mom’ escaped from his lips, fanned out, and glided unsteadily in the air like a scarlet butterfly, its wings carrying it to the southwest, where the wilderness was broad and the airstream swirled, and where the bright sunlight raised a white screen over the Black Water River. Powerless to scale the translucent screen, the wisp of ‘Mom’ turned and headed east after a momentary hesitation, despite Father’s desire to send her to the southwestern paradise. But Grandma didn’t want to go there. Instead she followed the meandering dike, taking fistcakes to Granddad’s troops, turning her head back from time to time to signal her son, my father, with her golden eyes.
Twenty days earlier, Father had gone with Granddad to dig up Grandma’s grave. It was definitely not a good day for swallows, for a dozen sodden clouds, like torn cotton wadding, hung in the low sky, reeking like rotting fish and spoiled shrimp. An ill wind carried a stream of sinister air down the Black Water River, along whose banks the corpses of dogs shattered by muskmelon grenades during the battle with humans the previous winter lay decomposing amid the sallow water grass; swallows migrating north from Hainan Island flew across the river with dread, as frogs below began their mating ritual, gaunt bodies caught up in the passions of love following a winter of hibernation.
Father stood with Granddad and nineteen Iron Society soldiers, all carrying hoes and pickaxes, at the head of Grandma’s grave. Golden flowers of bitterweed, the first of the year, dotted the faded black earth of the column of mounds.
Three minutes of silence.
‘Douguan, you’re sure this is the one?’ Granddad asked.
‘It’s this one,’ Father replied. ‘I could never forget.’
‘Okay,’ Granddad said. ‘Start digging!’
The Iron Society soldiers raised their tools, but were reluctant to start. So Granddad took a pickaxe from one of them, aimed at the mound, which arched up like a woman’s breast, and swung with all his might, to bury the tool in the soil with a heavy thud. He then pulled it towards him, scooping out a chunk of the black earth.
Father’s heart knotted up as the pickaxe split the grave mound, and at that instant he experienced fear and loathing for Granddad’s ruthlessness.
‘Dig it up,’ Granddad said feebly.
Forming a ring around Grandma’s grave, the soldiers began to chop and dig, levelling the mound in no time. Father’s thoughts returned to the night of the ninth day of the eighth lunar month, 1939, when they had buried Grandma. Fires raging on the bridge and torches ringing her body had illuminated her dead face, nearly bringing it back to life, before it was swallowed up by the black earth. Now the likeness was being dug up again, and Father grew tense as the layers were pared away, until he thought he saw Grandma’s smile as she kissed death through the earth separating them.
The Iron Society soldiers stopped digging when the final layer of soil covering the sorghum was removed and cast pleading looks at Granddad and Father, who saw their noses twitch as the overpowering stench of decay rose from the grave. To Father, who breathed in greedily, it was the odour of the milk he’d suckled at Grandma’s breast.
‘Clear it away!’ Granddad ordered, his black eyes devoid of pity. ‘Clear it away!’
Reluctantly they bent down and began pulling the sorghum out of the grave. Transparent drops of water oozed from the naked stalks, turned by decay into the glossy red of moist jade.
Deeper and deeper they went, the stench growing stronger. But to Father it was the rich aroma of sorghum wine, intoxicating, dizzying. He wanted to see Grandma as soon as possible, but the prospect also frightened him. The sorghum covering grew ever thinner, yet he felt the distance between him and Grandma increase. The final layer of stalks suddenly rustled loudly, wrenching shouts of alarm from some of the soldiers and striking others dumb with fear. Their faces were ashen, and only Granddad’s insistence gave them the courage to peek down into the grave.
Father watched as four brown field voles scrambled up the sides of the unearthed grave, while a fifth one, pure white, squatted on a supremely beautiful sorghum stalk in the middle of the grave. Everyone stared at the brown voles as they scampered away; meanwhile, the white one perched haughtily without stirring, staring back with its tiny, jet-black eyes. Father picked up a clod of earth and hurled it into the grave. The vole sprang two feet into the air, fell back, and scurried madly around the edges. With loathing swelling their insides, the soldiers rained clods of earth down on the white vole until it lay smashed in the middle of the grave.
According to Father, Grandma emerged from the resplendent, aromatic grave as lovely as a flower, as in a fairy tale. But the faces of the Iron Society soldiers contorted whenever they described in gory detail the hideous shape of her corpse and the suffocating stench issuing from the grave. Father called them liars. His senses were particularly keen at the time, he recalled, and as the last few stalks were removed, Grandma’s sweet, beautiful smile made the area crackle as though swept by a raging fire. His only regret was how fleeting the moment had been. For, when Grandma’s body was lifted out of the grave, her lustrous bea
uty and delicate fragrance turned into a mist and floated gently away, leaving behind only a white skeleton.
After lifting the body out of the grave, the soldiers ran down to the bank of the Black Water River and vomited dark-green bile into the dark-green water. Granddad spread out a piece of white cloth and told Father to help him lift Grandma’s skeleton onto it. Infected by the sound of vomiting in the river, Father felt a spasm in his neck, and hacking sounds erupted from his throat. He hated the thought of touching the pale-white bones.
‘Douguan,’ Granddad said, ‘you don’t think your own mom’s bones are too dirty to touch, do you? Not you!’
Moved by the rare tragic look on Granddad’s face, Father bent down and tentatively reached out to touch Grandma’s pale leg bone, which was so icy it froze his guts. Granddad tried to lift the skeleton by the shoulder blades, but it disintegrated and landed in a heap on the ground. A pair of red ants crawled in the sockets that had once been home to Grandma’s limpid eyes, their antennae vibrating. Father threw down Grandma’s leg bone, turned tail, and ran, filling the air with howls of grief.
4
AT NOON, THE funeral master announced loudly, ‘Begin the procession,’ and mourners swept into the fields like a human tide, followed by the Yu family bier, moving slowly towards them like a floating iceberg. Large open tents in which sumptuous road offerings were displayed had been placed on both sides of the road every couple of hundred yards. Cavalry troops led by Five Troubles formed a guard on either side of the road, galloping round and round.
A fat monk in a yellow robe, his left shoulder and arm exposed, led the procession with a halberd from which chimes hung, twinkling as it spun around his body, sometimes flying up in the air towards the onlookers. At least half the onlookers recognised him as the pauper monk from the Tianqi Temple who never burned incense and never chanted the Buddha’s name, preferring to drink great bowlfuls of wine and boldly partake of meat and fish. He kept a skinny yet uncommonly fertile little woman, who presented him with a whole brood of little monks. He opened a passage through the crowds by flinging his halberd at their heads, his face beaming.