‘Didn’t you say it was all the fault of that damned rain?’
‘No, no, I said that damned rain probably came because the bottom fell out of the Milky Way.’
Grandma uttered an ‘Oh!’ Granddad heard the water splashing in the brass basin.
Three days later, Grandma said she was going home to burn incense for Great-Grandma. When she and Father were seated on the black mule, she said to Passion, ‘I won’t be back tonight.’
That night the woman Liu went over to the eastern compound to gamble with the hired hands. Golden flames lit up Grandma’s room again.
After riding the mule back under the stars, she stood beneath the window and listened to what was going on inside. During the angry tirade that followed, Grandma gouged a dozen bloody lines in Passion’s face with her nails and slapped Granddad’s left cheek – hard. He just laughed. She raised her hand again, but before it reached his cheek it went limp, and she merely brushed his shoulder. He sent her reeling with a vicious slap.
Grandma burst out crying.
Granddad left, taking Passion with him.
7
THE IRON SOCIETY soldiers freed up one of their mounts so Granddad and Father could ride. Whipping his horse, Black Eye took the lead, while the glib Five Troubles, who hated the Communists and the Nationalists, trotted alongside Granddad. His dappled colt was very young and eager to catch up to the others, but Five Troubles kept a tight rein. Never a man to mince words, he looked back and said, ‘Commander Yu, I’ve been doing all the talking. You haven’t said anything.’
Granddad smiled wryly. ‘I can barely read two hundred words. I’m an expert in murder and arson, but you might as well take me to the slaughterhouse if you want me to talk about national affairs!’
‘Then who do you think we ought to turn the country over to after we drive out the Japanese?’
‘That has nothing to do with me. All I know is that no one would dare take a bite out of my dick.’
‘What would you say if the Communists were in charge?’
Granddad snorted contemptuously out of one nostril.
‘How about the Nationalists?’
He snorted out of the other nostril.
‘That’s what I say. What China needs is an emperor! I’ve got it all figured out: struggles come and go, long periods of division precede unity and long periods of unity precede division, but the nation aways falls into the hands of an emperor. The nation is the emperor’s family, the family is the emperor’s nation. That’s why he governs so benevolently. But if a political party is in charge, everybody’s got his own idea, with Grandpa saying it’s too cold and Grandma complaining about the heat, and everything’s all fucked up.’
He reined in his dappled colt and waited for Granddad to catch up. Then, leaning over secretively, he said, ‘Commander Yu, I’ve been reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marshes since I was a kid, and I know them like the back of my hand. The seat of my courage is as big as a hen’s egg, but unfortunately I don’t have a wise leader to serve. I used to think Black Eye was one. That’s why I left home, to join up with him and do something worthwhile before I got married and settled down.
‘Who’d have guessed that he was as stupid as a pig and as dumb as an ox, short on courage and long on bullshit? All he cares about is his little plot of land in Saltwater Gap. Our ancestors had a saying: Birds perch on the best wood, a good horse neighs when it sees a master trainer. After thinking it over, I’ve concluded that in all of Northeast Gaomi Township you, Commander Yu, are the only true leader. My comrades and I demanded that Black Eye bring you into the society. It’s what they call “inviting the tiger into the house”. When you’re one of us, if you can sleep on firewood and drink gall, like the famous king of Yue, you’ll gain everyone’s sympathy and respect. Then I’ll wait for a chance to get rid of Black Eye and nominate you to replace him. With a change in the ruling house, discipline will be tightened. Once we bring Northeast Gaomi Township under our control, we’ll move north and occupy Southeast Pingdu Township and Northern Jiao Township, then unite all three areas.
‘When that’s done, we can set up our capital in Saltwater Gap under the flag of the Iron Society, with you in command. From there we’ll send our forces in three directions, taking Jiao, Gaomi, and Pingdu counties, annihilating the Communists, the Nationalists, and the Japs. With the three capitals in our hands, we can set up our own nation!’
Granddad nearly fell off his horse. He looked with amazement at this handsome young man who was bursting with ideas of statehood, and his insides ached with excitement. Reining in his horse, he tumbled out of the saddle and, since it didn’t seem appropriate to kneel before Five Troubles, reached up, grabbed his sweaty hand, and said in a tremulous voice, ‘Sir! Why couldn’t I have met you before this? Why did it take so long?’
‘A leader shouldn’t talk like that. Let’s put our hearts and minds together to do something really important!’ Five Troubles said with tears in his eyes.
Black Eye, who was more than a li ahead of them, reined in his horse and shouted, ‘Hey – are you two coming or not?’
Cupping his hand over his mouth, Five Troubles yelled, ‘We’re coming! Old Yu’s girth broke. We’re fixing it now!’ He turned to look at Father, who was sitting bright-eyed on his horse. ‘Young Master Yu,’ he said, ‘we’ve been discussing serious matters. Don’t breathe a word of our conversation to anyone!’
Father nodded vigorously.
Granddad felt more clearheaded than ever before in his life. Five Troubles’ words were a rag that had wiped his heart clean, until it shone like a mirror; finally, he could see the purpose of his struggles, and he uttered something that even Father, who was sitting in front of him, didn’t hear clearly: ‘Heaven’s will!’
Alternating between a gallop and a trot, the horses arrived at the banks of the Black Water River at noon. That afternoon they left the river behind them, and as night was about to fall, Granddad rose up in the saddle to gaze out at the Salty Water River, which was half as broad as the Black Water River and meandered through alkaline plains. Its grey waters looked like dull glass that gave off a murky glare.
8
COUNTY MAGISTRATE NINE Dreams Cao had used a brilliant stratagem in the late autumn of 1928 to wipe out the bandits of Northeast Gaomi Township led by my granddad. Decades later, when Granddad was in the mountains of Hokkaido, this tragic page in history was always before him. He thought back to how smug he had felt as he was driven in his black Chevrolet sedan on the bumpy Northeast Gaomi Township mountain road, an unwitting decoy who had led eight hundred good men into a trap. His limbs grew ice-cold at the memory of those eight hundred men lined up in a remote gulley outside Jinan City to be mowed down by machine guns. While he was roasting fine-scaled silver carp from Hokkaido’s shallow rivers, he agonised over the eight hundred deaths. . . .
After making a pile of broken bricks, Granddad climbed over the high wall around the Jinan police station in the small hours of the morning, then slid down the other side into clumps of scrap paper and weeds, frightening off a couple of stray cats. He slipped into a house, changed from his black wool military uniform into some tattered clothes, then went out and merged with the crowds on the street to watch his fellow villagers and his men being loaded onto boxcars. Sentries stood around the station with dark, murderous looks on their faces. Black smoke poured out of the locomotive, steam hissed from the exhaust pipes. . . . Granddad walked south on the rusty tracks.
At dawn, after walking all day and night, he reached a dry riverbed that reeked of blood. The bodies of hundreds of Northeast Gaomi Township bandits were piled up in layers, filling half the riverbed. He felt remorseful, horrified, vengeful. He was fed up with a life that was little more than an unending cycle of kill-or-be-killed, eat-or-be-eaten. He thought of the chimney smoke curling in the air above his quiet village; of the creaking pulley as a bucket of clear water was brought out of the well to water a fuzzy young donkey; of a fiery
red rooster standing on a wall covered with date branches to crow at the radiant rays of dawn. He decided to go home.
After spending his whole life in the confines of Northeast Gaomi Township, this was the first time he’d ever travelled so far, and home seemed to be on the other side of the world. Recalling that the train to Jinan had travelled west the entire trip, he thought that all he had to do was follow the tracks east and he’d have no trouble getting back to Gaomi County. When one of the trains came down the tracks, he hid in a nearby ditch or amid some crops to watch the red or black wheels rumble past, bending the curved tracks.
Granddad ate when he could beg food in a village and drank when he came upon a river. Always he headed east, day and night. After two weeks, he finally spied the two familiar blockhouses at the Gaomi train station, where the county aristocracy was gathered to see off their onetime magistrate Nine Dreams Cao, who had been promoted to police commissioner for Shandong Province. Granddad crumpled to the ground, not sure why or how, and lay with his face in the black earth for a long time before becoming aware of the pungent taste of blood in the dirt.
He decided not to go home, even though he had often seen Grandma’s snow-white body and Father’s strangely innocent smile in the cold realm of his dreams. He awoke to find his grimy face bathed in hot tears and his heart aching. When he gazed up at the stars, he knew how deeply he missed his wife and son. But now that the decisive moment had arrived, and he could smell the intimate aroma of wine mash permeating the darkness, he wavered.
The slap and a half from Grandma had created a barrier between them, like a cruel river. ‘Ass!’ she’d cursed him. ‘Swine!’ An angry scowl had underscored her outburst as she stood there, hands on hips, back bent, neck thrust forward, a trickle of bright-red blood running down her chin. The awful sight had thrown his heart into confusion.
In all his years, no woman had ever cursed him as viciously as that, and certainly no woman had ever slapped him. It wasn’t that he felt no remorse over his affair with Passion, but the humiliating verbal and physical abuse had driven that remorse out of his heart, and self-recrimination had been supplanted by a powerful drive to avenge himself.
Emboldened by a sense of self-righteousness, he’d gone to live with Passion in Saltwater Gap, some fifteen li distant. After buying a house, he led what even he knew was a troubled life, discovering in Passion’s deficiencies Grandma’s virtues. Now that he’d narrowly escaped death, his legs had carried him back to this spot, and he wanted to rush into that compound and revive the past; but the sound of those curses erected a barrier that cut him off from the road ahead.
Granddad dragged his exhausted body to Saltwater Gap in the middle of the night, where he stood in front of the house he’d bought two years earlier and looked up at the late-night moon high in the southwestern sky. Passion’s vigorous, slender body floated in front of his eyes, and as he thought about the golden flames ringing her body and the blue flames issuing from her eyes, a tormenting nostalgia made him forget his mental and physical anguish. He pulled himself over the wall and jumped into the compound.
Keeping a rein on his feelings, he knocked on the window frame and cried out softly: ‘Passion . . . Passion . . .’
Inside, a muffled cry of alarm, followed by the sound of intermittent sobs.
‘Passion, can’t you tell who it is? It’s me, Yu Zhan’ao!’
‘Brother . . . dear brother! Scare me to death, but I’m not afraid! I want to see you even if you’re a ghost! You’ve come to me, I, I’m deliriously happy. . . . You didn’t forget me after all. . . . Come in. . . . Come in. . . .’
‘Passion, I’m not a ghost. I’m still alive, I escaped!’ He pounded on the window. ‘Did you hear that? Could a ghost make sounds like that on your window?’
Passion began to wail.
‘Don’t cry,’ Granddad said. ‘Somebody will hear you.’
He walked over to the door, but before he got there, the naked Passion was in his arms.
For two months, Granddad didn’t step outside. He lay on the kang, staring blankly at the papered ceiling. Passion reported talk on the street about the bandits of Northeast Gaomi Township. When he could no longer bear his indelible memories of the tragedy, he filled the air with the sound of grinding teeth. All those opportunities to take that old dog Nine Dreams Cao’s life, yet he had spared him. His thoughts turned to my grandma. Her relationship with Nine Dreams Cao had been a major factor in his being duped, so his hatred for Nine Dreams Cao carried over to her as well. Who knows, maybe they had conspired to lead him into a trap. The news Passion brought made this seem likely.
One day, as Passion was massaging his chest, she said, ‘Dear brother, you may not have forgotten her, but it didn’t take her long to forget you. After they took you away on the train, she went with Black Eye, the leader of the Iron Society, and has lived with him in Saltwater Gap for months.’ The sight of Passion’s insatiable dark body gave birth to repugnance, and Granddad’s thoughts returned to that other body, as fair as virgin snow. He remembered, again, that sultry afternoon when he had stretched her out on his straw rain cape in the dense shadows of the sorghum field.
Granddad rolled over. ‘Is my pistol still here?’
Passion wrapped her arms around him. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked fearfully.
‘I’m going to kill those dog bastards!’
‘Zhan’ao! Dear brother, you can’t keep killing people! Think how many you’ve killed already!’
He shoved her away. ‘Shut up!’ he snarled. ‘Give me my gun!’
She began to sob as she ripped open the seam of the pillow and removed his pistol.
With Father in front of him, Granddad followed Five Troubles on the black horse. Even after gazing for a long time at the dull grey surface of the Salty Water River and the vast white alkaline plains stretching from its bank, his excitement from their stirring conversation still hadn’t abated; yet he couldn’t stop thinking about his fight with Black Eye on the bank of the river.
With his pistol under his arm, he rode a huge braying donkey all morning. When he reached Saltwater Gap, he tied his donkey to an elm tree at the village entrance to let it gnaw on the bark, then pulled his tattered felt cap down over his eyebrows and strode into the village. Saltwater Gap was a large village, but Granddad walked straight towards a row of tall buildings without asking directions. Winter was just around the corner, and a dozen chestnut trees with a few stubborn yellow leaves were bent before the wind. Though not strong, it cut like a knife.
He slipped into the compound in front of the tiled buildings, where the Iron Society was meeting. On the wall of a spacious hall with a brick floor hung a large amber-coloured painting of a strange old man riding a ferocious, mottled tiger. A variety of curious objects rested on an altar beneath the painting – a monkey claw, the skull of a chicken, a dried pig gallbladder, a cat’s head, and the hoof of a donkey. Incense smoke curled upward. A man with a ring of moles around one eye was sitting on a thick, circular sheet of iron, rubbing the shaved dome of scalp above his forehead with his left hand and covering the crack in his ass with his right. He was chanting loudly: ‘Amalai amalai iron head iron arm iron spirit altar iron tendon iron bone iron cinnabar altar iron heart iron liver iron lung altar raw rice forged into iron barrier iron knife iron gun no way out iron ancestor riding iron tiger urgent edict amalai amalai amalai . . .’
Granddad recognised the man as Northeast Gaomi Township’s infamous half-man, half-demon, Black Eye.
His chant finished, Black Eye stood up and kowtowed three times to the iron ancestor seated on his tiger. Then he returned to his sheet of iron, sat down, and raised his fists, all ten fingernails turned in and hidden from view. He nodded towards the Iron society soldiers, who reached up with their left hands to their shaved scalps and covered their asses with their right, closed their eyes, and raised their voices to repeat Black Eye’s chant. Their sonorous shouts filled the hall with demonic airs. Half of Granddad’s ang
er vanished – his plan had been to murder Black Eye, but his loathing for the man was being weakened by reverence and awe.
After completing their chant, the Iron Society soldiers kowtowed to the old demon on his tiger mount, then formed two tight ranks in front of Black Eye. Granddad had heard that the Iron Society soldiers ate raw rice, and now he watched as each of them took a bowl of it from Black Eye and gobbled it down. Then, one by one, they walked up to the altar and picked up the monkey claw, mule hoof, and chicken skull to rub on their shaved scalps.
The white sun was streaked with red by the time the ceremony was completed, when Granddad fired a shot at the large painting, putting a hole in the face of the old demon on his tiger. The soldiers broke ranks at the sound of gunfire, took a moment to get their bearings, then rushed out and surrounded Granddad.
‘Who are you? You’ve got the nerves of a thief!’ Black Eye thundered.
Granddad lifted his tattered felt cap with the barrel of his smoking gun. ‘Your venerable ancestor, Yu Zhan’ao!’
‘I thought you were dead!’ Black Eye exclaimed.
‘I wanted to see you dead first!’
‘You think you can kill me with that thing? Men, bring me a knife!’
A soldier walked up with a butcher knife. Black Eye held his breath and gave a sign to the man. Granddad watched the blade of the knife hack Black Eye’s exposed abdomen as though it were a chunk of hardwood, but all it left were some pale scratches.
The Iron Society soldiers began to chant in unison: ‘Amalai amalai amalai iron head iron arm iron spirit altar . . . iron ancestor riding iron tiger urgent edict amalai . . . amalai . . . amalai . . .’
Granddad was stunned. How could anybody be impervious to knives and bullets? He pondered the Iron Society chant. Everything on the body was iron – everything, that is, but the eyes.
‘Can you stop a bullet with your eye?’ Granddad asked.