The owl was perched in a large willow tree directly above Dead Baby Hollow. Had it been daytime, Grandma and Father would have been able to see the growths of blood-red beards on the trunk of the tree, which stood in the middle of a marshy plot of land. Father sensed the owl’s green eyes flashing solemnly amid the willow branches. His teeth chattered and chills snaked from the soles of his feet all the way up to the crown of his head. He squeezed Grandma’s hand, feeling that his head was about to explode from the terror building up inside it.
A sticky odour clung to the air above Dead Baby Hollow. White drops of rain the size of brass coins fell to the ground, gouging out scars in the impenetrable blackness. Grandma tugged on Father’s hand as a sign for him to kneel down, and as he did so his hands and legs touched wild grasses growing in crazy profusion in the marshy land; the coarse, needlelike tips of leaves jabbed his chin, upsetting the harmony in his soul. He felt countless pairs of dead babies’ eyes boring into his back and heard them kicking, squirming, laughing.
Bang bang crack crack. Grandma was striking a flint against a piece of steel. Gentle red sparks illuminated her trembling hands. When the tinder caught fire, she blew on it, and a weak glimmer of light began to spread. She lit the red candle in the paper lantern, from which a ball of red light emerged like a lonely spectre. The owl’s song stopped as dead babies formed ranks to surround Father, Grandma, and the lantern.
Grandma made a search of the marshy hollow while dozens of moths slammed into the red-paper covering of the lantern in her hand. Her bound feet made walking difficult on the wild grasses and the soft ground. Father was curious to know what she was looking for, but didn’t dare ask. He followed her silently.
A rolled-up straw mat lay amid a clump of thick-stemmed, broad-leafed cocklebur. Grandma handed Father the lantern, laid her scale on the ground, then bent over and picked up the mat. In the red light of the lantern her fingers looked like squirming pink worms. The mat fell open to reveal a dead infant wrapped in rags. Its bald head was like a shiny gourd. Father’s knees were knocking. Grandma picked up the scale and hooked it to the rag shroud. Holding the scale in one hand, she adjusted the weight with the other. But with a loud rip the rag gave out and the tiny corpse fell to the ground, followed by the weight, which landed on Grandma’s toe, and the scale, which flew over and hit Father on the head. He yelped in pain and nearly dropped the lantern. The owl let out a hideous laugh, as though mocking their clumsiness. Grandma picked up the scale and jammed the hook through the baby’s flesh. The horrifying sound made Father’s skin crawl. He looked away, and by the time he’d turned back, Grandma was moving the weight across the arm of the scale, notch by notch, higher and lower, until it was in perfect balance. She signalled Father to bring the lantern closer. The scale glowed red. There it was: ‘peony’.
When they reached the village Father could still hear the owl’s angry screeches.
Grandma confidently put her money on ‘peony’.
The winner that day was ‘winter sweet’.
Grandma fell gravely ill.
As Father looked at Little Auntie Xiangguan, he recalled that the mouth of the dead infant also gaped; his ears rang with the songs of the owl, and he yearned for the moist air of the marshy land, since his lips and tongue were parched by a dry northwest wind that sent dust swirling in the sky.
Father saw how Granddad was looking at Grandma, darkly malevolent, like a bird of prey about to pounce. Her back hunched suddenly as she bent over the bed of the wagon and began thumping the comforter, her face covered with tears and snot: ‘Little sister . . . dear little sister . . . Xiangguan . . . my baby . . .’
Granddad’s anger softened in the face of Grandma’s anguish. Uncle Arhat walked up beside her and said softly, ‘Mistress, don’t cry. Let’s take them inside.’
Grandma picked up Little Auntie Xiangguan’s body and carried it into the house. Granddad followed her with Second Grandma.
Father stayed on the street to watch Uncle Arhat lead the mule out from between the shafts of the wagon, its sides rubbed raw by the narrow shafts. Then he untied the other one from behind the wagon. They shook themselves violently, filling the sky with fine dust clouds, before Uncle Arhat led them into the eastern compound. Father fell in behind him. ‘Go home, Douguan,’ Uncle Arhat said, ‘go on home.’
Grandma was sitting on the floor stoking a fire in the stove, on which a half-filled pot of water stood. As soon as Father slipped into the room, he spotted Second Grandma lying on the kang, eyes open, cheeks twitching ceaselessly. He also saw Little Auntie Xiangguan lying across the top of the kang, a red bundle covering her hideous countenance. Once again he thought back to that night when he had accompanied Grandma to Dead Baby Hollow to weigh the dead infant. The braying of the mules in the eastern compound sounded incredibly like the owl’s screeching. Soon, Xiangguan would be lying in Dead Baby Hollow to feed the wild dogs. He had never dreamed that the dead could look so hideous, yet he could barely resist removing the red bundle to stare at Xiangguan’s repulsive face.
Grandma walked into the room with a brass basin full of hot water and placed it beside the kang. ‘Go outside!’ she said, giving Father a shove.
Reluctantly, resentfully, he went into the outer room and heard the door shut behind him. Unable to control his curiosity, he stuck his eye up against a crack in the door to see what was happening inside. Granddad and Grandma were kneeling beside the kang undressing Second Grandma. When they flung her clothes to the floor, her soaked pants landed with a loud thud. The nauseating stink of blood assailed Father’s nostrils. Second Grandma flailed her arms weakly as ghastly sounds emerged from her mouth.
‘Hold her arms down,’ Grandma pleaded. Both Grandma’s and Granddad’s faces were blurred in the rising steam from the brass basin.
Grandma took a steaming sheepskin towel and wrung it dry, the excess water dripping loudly into the basin. The towel was so hot it scalded her hands, even when she flipped it from one to the other. After shaking it open, she placed it on Second Grandma’s soiled face. Poor Second Grandma twisted her neck, and screams of terror, owl-like screeches, filtered up through the towel. When Grandma removed the towel, it was filthy. She swished it in the basin, then wrung it dry, and slowly wiped down Second Grandma’s body.
Less and less steam rose from the brass basin, while beads of condensed steam dotted Grandma’s face. ‘Dump the dirty water,’ she said to Granddad, ‘and bring me some clean water.’
Father ran out into the yard to watch Granddad. His back was bent as he staggered over to the low wall of the privy to dump the water on the other side. Father ran back and put his eye up to the crack in the door again. By now Second Grandma’s body was glowing like polished sandalwood. Her protests were low and laboured, no more than agonised moans. Grandma had Granddad lift her up so she could remove the kang mat. Then she took a clean one and spread it over the kang. After Granddad laid Second Grandma back down, Grandma put a big wad of cotton between her legs and covered her with a sheet. ‘Little sister,’ she said softly, ‘sleep, go to sleep, Zhan’ao and I will stay with you.’
Second Grandma closed her eyes peacefully.
Granddad went out to dump some more water.
While Grandma was washing Little Auntie Xiangguan’s body, Father slipped rashly into the room and stood in front of the kang. Grandma saw him but didn’t chase him away. As she wiped the dried blood from Little Auntie’s body, pearl-like strands of tears fell from her eyes. When she was finished, she leaned her head against the bedroom wall and didn’t move for a long time, as though she, too, were dead.
At sunset Granddad wrapped Little Auntie’s body in a blanket and held it in his arms. Father followed him to the door. ‘Go on back, Douguan. Stay with Mom and Second Mom.’
Uncle Arhat stopped Granddad at the southern-compound gate. ‘Manager Yu,’ he said, ‘you go back, too. I’ll take care of it.’
Granddad returned to the doorway, where he held Father’s hand and watched Unc
le Arhat walk out of the village.
7
ON THE TWENTY-THIRD day of the twelfth month in 1973, Eighteen Stabs Geng celebrated his eightieth birthday. Waking at the crack of dawn, he overheard the weak, sickly voice of an old neighbour woman – ‘Yongqi . . .’ – and the gravelly voice of a man – ‘Feeling better, Ma?’ The old woman replied, ‘No, I’m dizzier when I wake up than when I go to bed. . . .’
Eighteen Stabs Geng strained to sit up by resting his hands on the icy mat. He, too, felt dizzy this morning. A cold wind whistled outside, driving snow flurries against the murky paper on the window. He threw his moth-eaten dog pelt over his shoulder, reached out for his dragon-head cane leaning against the wall behind the door, and stumbled out the door. The yard was covered by a thick blanket of snow, and as he gazed at the crumbling earth wall all he could see was a sea of silvery white, dotted here and there with sorghum husks.
The snowfall showed no sign of letting up. He turned back, a sense of the survivor’s good fortune in his heart, but when he raised the lids of the rice and flour vats with the head of his cane, both were empty. Last night’s eyes hadn’t tricked him. His stomach had not been visited by food for two days now, and his useless old intestines twitched and twisted. It was time to swallow his pride and ask for some grain. Although his belly was empty and he was shivering from the cold, he knew that getting grain out of the hardhearted branch secretary was not going to be easy. He decided to boil some water to warm his belly before going out for a showdown with that bastard. He raised the lid of the water vat. No water, just chunks of ice.
It dawned on him that he hadn’t lit the stove for three days, and that it had been ten days since his last visit to the well. He went into the yard and scooped up twenty or thirty gourdfuls of snow, which he dumped into his cracked, unscrubbed pot. Then he looked around for some firewood, but there was none. So he went into the bedroom, tore a handful of straw from the mat covering the kang, and hacked up some woven sorghum cushions and a block of straw with his cleaver. He knelt down and started a fire with his flintstone. Matches that used to sell for two fen a box now required a ration coupon, which he didn’t have, and he couldn’t afford matches that didn’t require a coupon. He was a penniless old bastard.
Tongues of red flame began to lick out of the black hole in the stove, so he pressed up close to warm his freezing belly. The chill melted away, but his back was as cold as ever. After quickly stuffing more straw into the stove, he turned his back to the fire. The chill melted from his back, but ice re-formed on his belly. A body cold on one side and warm on the other only increased his misery, so he concentrated on feeding straw into the stove to get some water boiling. With a bellyful of hot water, he could stand up to that little bastard, and if he couldn’t squeeze any grain out of him, at least he’d take him away from his toasty stove for a while.
As the fire began to die out under the pot of water, he shoved the last handful of straw into the greedy, gaping black mouth of the old Kitchen God and prayed it would burn slowly. But the fuel flared up and burned like mad, with no sign of progress in the pot. So he jumped up, more nimbly than even he thought possible, and dashed into the bedroom, where he ripped out the last few handfuls of straw from under the kang mat, and stuffed them into the stove hole, a desperate attempt to melt the ice in the pot. Then, with brutal determination, he shoved his little three-legged stool into the stove hole and jammed his nearly bald broom down the black throat of the Kitchen God, which belched once or twice and vomited clouds of dense black smoke. Turning pale with fright, he frantically fanned the air around the stove, which kept swallowing, then spewing clouds of smoke. A loud crackle preceded the harsh, glowing flames from the stool and the broom, as he paused to catch his breath. Stung by the smoke, his old eyes shed tears like gummy mucus, which coursed down his leathery face.
The water in the pot began to sizzle like chirping cicadas – music to his ears – and a childlike grin spread across his face. However, when the fire began to dim, his smile was quickly replaced by a look of panic. Jumping to his feet, he searched for something, anything, to burn. The beams and crossbars would work, but he wasn’t strong enough to pull them down. Suddenly he remembered the story of Iron Crutch Li, one of the Eight Immortals, who incinerated his own leg. According to legend, Iron Crutch Li stuck his leg into the stove and listened to it crackle. ‘Dear brother,’ his wife had said, ‘you’ll make yourself a cripple.’ And just as she had forecast, the leg was ruined. Of course Geng knew he was no immortal, and even without burning his leg he could barely take a step. But, gimp or no, he was going to make his way to the branch secretary’s home and demand some grain.
Finally, as the fire in the stove was about to die, Geng’s gaze fell upon the spirit shrine set into the wall, and the black tablet it held. He reached up with his dragon-head cane to knock it loose. Dust flew and fear gripped his old heart as a profound misery suddenly penetrated the marrow of his bones. He picked up the ash-covered fox-spirit tablet, to which he’d made offerings for thirty-six years, and flung it into the belly of the stove. Hungry flames began licking the tablet, which sizzled and spat out juicy, dark red drops . . . scorching the flesh of the red fox that had diligently licked the eighteen wounds on his body with its cool, glorious tongue. Nothing would ever shake his belief that there was something miraculous about the fox’s tongue, since his wounds had been free of infection even after he’d crawled back to the village.
Although he was sure that his miraculous salvation portended good fortune in his future, it somehow never came. Eventually he became a pensioner, protected by the ‘five guarantees’ of food, clothing, medical aid, housing, and burial, and knew that his good fortune had finally arrived. But even that soon vanished, as he was neglected by everyone, including the little bastard who had been squatting in the basket over the mule’s back whittling a willow switch years earlier – the current branch secretary, who would probably be provincial secretary by now had he not been responsible for the deaths of nine people during the Great Leap Forward. The little bastard had cancelled his eligibility for the ‘five guarantees’.
The wooden tablet burned as slowly as a living fox, and as the blood-red tongues of flame barked away, he heard the water in the pot seethe and boil.
After scooping up the scalding water with the cracked gourd, he quickly sipped a mouthful and sent it coursing down to his stomach. He shuddered, then swallowed another mouthful. Now he was an immortal.
By the time he’d drunk two gourds of the hot water, his body was sweaty, and the lice, rejuvenated by the warmth, began to squirm and crawl around. Now he was hungrier than ever, but at least his strength had returned. Supported by his dragon-head cane, he walked out into the snowy landscape, shards of white jade cracking beneath his feet, his mind as clear as a bright August sky. The street was deserted, except for a black dog who stopped every so often to shake the snow off its back.
He followed the dog to the home of the little bastard, whose shiny black gate was closed tight. Fiery winter-sweet blossoms atop the wall drooped down like bright-red droplets. Absent-mindedly admiring them, he walked up the stone steps, breathed deeply, and knocked on the gate. A dog barked, but there were no human sounds. Suddenly gripped by fury, he leaned against the wall to steady himself, raised his dragon-head cane, and pounded the hasp of the shiny black gate. The dog on the other side roared and howled.
Finally the gate opened. A bright-eyed, pudgy little dog darted out and charged at him, but quickly retreated when Old Geng waved his cane in its face. Next out was a fair-skinned middle-aged woman. ‘Oh, it’s you, Master Geng,’ she said genially when she saw Eighteen Stabs standing at the gate. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I want to see the secretary,’ he answered hoarsely.
‘He went to a meeting at the commune,’ she said sympathetically.
‘Let me in,’ he said weakly. ‘I want to ask him what right he had to make me ineligible for a pension. I was bayoneted eighteen times by the Japs,
but they didn’t kill me. Did I go through all that just so I could starve to death at his hands?’
‘Master Geng,’ the woman said awkwardly, ‘he’s not home, honest. He went to a meeting at the commune early this morning. If you’re hungry, come in and have something to eat. We don’t have much, but there are plenty of yam cakes.’
‘Yam cakes?’ he said icily. ‘Not even your dog eats yam cakes!’
The woman was losing patience. ‘I won’t force you to eat them. He’s not home. He’s in a meeting at the commune. That’s where you’ll find him!’ She pulled her head back in and slammed the gate shut. He raised his cane and pounded on the gate again, but was so weak he nearly crumpled to the ground. As he shuffled through the foot-deep snow on the street, he mumbled, ‘Go to the commune. . . . Go to the commune. . . . Sue the little bastard. . . . Sue him for oppressing decent folk, sue him for holding back my grain.’ Even after he’d walked a long way, he could still smell the delicate fragrance of winter sweets amid the falling snow; he stopped and turned, then spat in the direction of the shiny black gate. The winter-sweet blossoms waved in the falling snowflakes like crackling tongues of flames.
It was nearly dusk by the time he reached the commune gate, whose steel ribs were as big around as his thumb; each was tipped with a barb. He could see through the spaces that the snow on the ground in the commune yard was black and filthy. People in new clothes and new caps, with large heads, fleshy ears, and greasy mouths, were scurrying back and forth. Some carried debristled pigs’ heads – the tips of the ears were blood-red – others carried silvery ribbonfish, and still others carried recently slaughtered chickens and ducks. He banged his dragon-head cane against the metal ribs, raising a loud clatter; but the people inside were too busy to give him anything but chilly glances before continuing on their way. He shouted angrily, tearfully, ‘Your honour . . . leader . . . I’ve been treated unjustly. . . . I’m starving. . . .’