Red Sorghum

  Father nodded.

  ‘Do you know how to use one?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Commander Yu took the Browning out of his belt and examined it carefully. It was well used, the enamel long gone. He pulled back the bolt, ejecting a copper-jacketed bullet, which he tossed in the air, caught, and shoved back into the chamber.

  ‘Here!’ he said, handing it over. ‘Use it the way I did.’

  Father took the pistol from him, and as he held it he thought back to a couple of nights earlier, when Commander Yu had used it to shatter a wine cup.

  A crescent moon had climbed into the sky and was pressing down on withered branches. Father carried a jug and a brass key out to the distillery to get some wine for Grandma. He opened the gate. The compound was absolutely still, the mule pen pitch-black, the distillery suffused with the stench of fermenting grain. When he took the lid off one of the vats in the moonlight, he saw the reflection of his gaunt face in the mirrorlike surface of wine. His eyebrows were short, his lips thin; he was surprised by his own ugliness. He dunked the jug into the vat of wine, which gurgled as it filled. After lifting it out, he changed his mind and poured the wine back, recalling the vat in which Grandma had washed her bloody face. Now she was inside, drinking with Commander Yu and Detachment Leader Leng, who was getting pretty drunk, no match for the other two.

  Father walked up to a second vat, the lid of which was held in place by a millstone. After putting his jug on the ground, he strained to remove the millstone, which rolled away and crashed up against yet another vat, punching a hole in the bottom, through which wine began to seep. Ignoring the leaky vat, he removed the lid from the one in front of him, and immediately smelled the blood of Uncle Arhat. The two faces, of Uncle Arhat and Grandma, appeared and reappeared in the wine vat. Father dunked the jug into the vat, filled it with blood-darkened wine, and carried it inside.

  Candles burned brightly on the table, around which Commander Yu and Detachment Leader Leng were glaring at each other and breathing heavily. Grandma stood between them, her left hand resting on Leng’s revolver, her right hand on Commander Yu’s Browning pistol.

  Father heard Grandma say, ‘Even if you can’t agree, you mustn’t abandon justice and honour. This isn’t the time or place to fight. Take your fury out on the Japanese.’

  Commander Yu spat out angrily, ‘You can’t scare me with the Wang regiment’s flags and bugles, you prick. I’m king here. I ate fistcakes for ten years, and I don’t give a damn about that fucking Big Claw Wang!’

  Detachment Leader Leng sneered. ‘Elder Brother Zhan’ao, I’ve got your best interests at heart. So does Commander Wang. If you turn your cache of weapons over to us, we’ll make you a battalion commander, and he’ll provide rifles and pay. That’s better than being a bandit.’

  ‘Who’s a bandit? Who isn’t a bandit? Anyone who fights the Japanese is a national hero. Last year I knocked off three Japanese sentries and inherited three automatic rifles. You’re no bandit, but how many Japs have you killed? You haven’t taken a hair off a single Jap’s ass!’

  Detachment Leader Leng sat down and lit a cigarette.

  Father took advantage of the lull to hand the wine jug up to Grandma, whose face changed as she took it from him. Glaring at Father, she filled the three cups.

  ‘Uncle Arhat’s blood is in this wine,’ she said. ‘If you’re honourable men you’ll drink it, then go out and destroy the Jap convoy. After that, chickens can go their own way, dogs can go theirs. Well water and river water don’t mix.’

  She picked up her cup and drank the wine down noisily.

  Commander Yu held out his cup, threw back his head, and drained it.

  Detachment Leader Leng followed suit, but put his cup down half full. ‘Commander Yu,’ he said, ‘I’ve had all I can handle. So long!’

  With her hand still on his revolver, Grandma asked him, ‘Are you going to fight?’

  ‘Don’t beg!’ Commander Yu snarled. ‘I’ll fight, even if he doesn’t.’

  ‘I’ll fight,’ Detachment Leader Leng said.

  Grandma let her hand drop, and Leng jammed his revolver back into its holster.

  The pale skin around his nose was dotted with dozens of pockmarks. A heavy cartridge belt hung from his belt, which sagged when he holstered his revolver.

  ‘Zhan’ao,’ Grandma said, ‘I’m entrusting Douguan to your care. Take him along the day after tomorrow.’

  Commander Yu looked at my father and smiled. ‘Have you got the balls, foster-son?’

  Father stared scornfully at the hard yellow teeth showing between Commander Yu’s parted lips. He didn’t say a word.

  Commander Yu picked up a wine cup and placed it on top of Father’s head, then told him to stand in the doorway. He whipped out his Browning pistol and walked over to the corner.

  Father watched Commander Yu take three long strides to the corner – three slow, measured steps. Grandma’s face turned ashen. The corners of Detachment Leader Leng’s mouth were curled in a contemptuous smile.

  When he reached the corner, Commander Yu whirled around. Father watched him raise his arm, as a dark-red cast came over his black eyes. The Browning spat out a puff of white smoke. An explosion erupted above Father’s head, and shards of shattered ceramic fell around him, one landing against his neck. He shrugged his shoulder, and it slid down into his pants. He didn’t utter a sound. The blood had drained from Grandma’s face. Detachment Leader Leng sat down hard on a stool. ‘Good shooting,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Good boy!’ Commander Yu said proudly.

  The Browning pistol in Father’s hand seemed to weigh a ton.

  ‘I don’t have to show you,’ Commander Yu said. ‘You know how to shoot. Have Mute get his men ready.’

  Gripping his pistol tightly, Father darted through the sorghum field, crossed the highway, and ran up to Mute, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground, honing his sabre knife with a shiny green stone. Some of his men were seated, others lying down.

  ‘Get your men ready,’ Father said to him.

  Mute looked at Father out of the corner of his eye, but kept honing his knife for another moment or so. Then he picked up a couple of sorghum leaves, wiped the stone residue from the blade, and plucked a stalk of grass to test its sharpness. It fell in two pieces the instant it touched the blade.

  ‘Get your men ready,’ Father repeated.

  Mute sheathed his knife and laid it on the ground beside him, his face creased in a savage grin. With one of his mammoth hands he signalled Father to come closer.

  ‘Uh! Uh!’ he grunted.

  Father shuffled forward and stopped a pace or so from Mute, who reached out, grabbed him by the sleeve, jerked him into his lap, and pinched his ear so hard that he grimaced. Father jammed his Browning pistol up into Mute’s rib cage. Mute grabbed Father’s nose and pinched it until tears came to his eyes. An eerie laugh burst from Mute’s mouth.

  The seated men laughed raucously.

  ‘A lot like Commander Yu, isn’t he?’

  ‘Commander Yu’s seed.’

  ‘Douguan, I miss your mom.’

  ‘Douguan, I feel like nibbling those date-topped buns of hers.’

  Father’s embarrassment quickly turned to rage. Raising his pistol, he aimed it at the man wishfully thinking of date-topped buns, and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked, but no bullet emerged.

  The man, ashen-faced, jumped to his feet and wrenched the pistol away. Father, still enraged, threw himself on the man, clawing, kicking, biting.

  Mute stood up, grabbed Father by the scruff of his neck, and flicked him away. He flew through the air and crashed into a thicket of sorghum stalks. A quick somersault and he was on his feet, railing and swearing as he charged Mute, who merely grunted a couple of times. The steely look in his eyes froze Father in his tracks. Mute picked up the pistol and pulled back the bolt; a bullet fell into his hand. Holding it in his fingers, he looked at the notch in the casing from the firing pin, and made some
unintelligible hand signs to Father. Then he stuck the pistol into Father’s belt and patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘What were you doing over there?’ Commander Yu asked.

  Father was embarrassed. ‘They . . . they said they wanted to sleep with Mom.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Commander Yu asked sternly.

  Father wiped his eyes with his arm. ‘I shot him!’

  ‘You shot somebody?’

  ‘The gun misfired.’ Father handed Commander Yu the shiny dud.

  Commander Yu took it from him, examined it, and gave it a casual flick. It described a beautiful arc before plopping into the river.

  ‘Good boy!’ Commander Yu said. ‘But use your gun on the Japanese first. After you’ve finished them off, anybody who says he wants to sleep with your mom, you shoot him in the gut. Not in the head, and not in the chest. Remember, in the gut.’

  Father lay on his belly alongside Commander Yu; the Fang brothers were on his other side. The cannon had been set up on the dike, aimed at the stone bridge, its barrel stuffed with cotton rags, a fuse sticking out behind. Fang Seven had placed a bundle of sorghum tinder next to him, some of which was already smouldering. A gourd filled with gunpowder and a tin of iron pellets lay beside Fang Six.

  Wang Wenyi was to Commander Yu’s left, curled up, holding his long-barrelled fowling piece in his hands. His wounded ear was stuck to the white bandage covering it.

  The sun was stake-high, its white core girded by a pink halo. The flowing water glittered. A flock of wild ducks flew over from the sorghum field, circled three times, then dived down to a grassy sandbar. A few landed on the surface of the river and began floating downstream, their bodies settling heavily in the water, their heads turning and darting constantly. Father was feeling warm and tingly. His clothes, dampened by the dew, were now dry. He pressed himself to the ground, but felt a pain in his chest, as from a sharp stone. When he rose up to see what it was, his head and upper torso were exposed above the dike. ‘Get down,’ Commander Yu ordered. Reluctantly, he did as he was told. Fang Six began to snore. Commander Yu picked up a clod of earth and tossed it in his face. Fang Six woke up bleary-eyed and yawned so heroically that two fine tears appeared in the corners of his eyes.

  ‘Are the Japs here?’ he asked loudly.

  ‘Fuck you!’ Commander Yu snarled. ‘No sleeping.’

  The riverbanks were absolutely still; the broad highway lay lifeless in its bed of sorghum. The stone bridge spanning the river was strikingly beautiful. A boundless expanse of sorghum greeted the reddening sun, which rose ever higher, grew ever brighter. Wild ducks floated in the shallow water by the banks, noisily searching for food with their flat bills. Father studied their beautiful feathers and alert, intelligent eyes. Aiming his heavy Browning pistol at one of their smooth backs, he was about to pull the trigger when Commander Yu forced his hand down. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, you little turtle egg?’

  Father was getting fidgety. The highway lay there like death itself. The sorghum had turned deep scarlet.

  ‘That bastard Leng wants to play games with me!’ Commander Yu spat out hatefully. The southern bank lay in silence; not a trace of the Leng detachment. Father knew it was Leng who had learned that the convoy would be passing his spot, and that he’d brought Commander Yu into the ambush only because he doubted his own ability to go it alone.

  Father was tense for a while, but gradually he relaxed, and his attention wandered back to the wild ducks. He thought about duck-hunting with Uncle Arhat, who had a fowling piece with a deep-red stock and a leather strap; it was now in the hands of Wang Wenyi. Tears welled up in his eyes, but not enough to spill out. Just like that day the year before. Under the warm rays of the sun, he felt a chill spread through his body.

  Uncle Arhat and the two mules had been taken away by the Japs, and Grandma had washed her bloody face in the wine vat until it reeked of alcohol and was beet-red. Her eyes were puffy; the front of her pale-blue cotton jacket was soaked in wine and blood. She stood stock-still beside the vat, staring down at her reflection. Father recalled how she had fallen to her knees and kowtowed three times to the vat, then stood up, scooped some wine with both hands, and drank it. The rosiness of her face was concentrated in her cheeks; all the colour had drained from her forehead and chin.

  ‘Kneel down!’ she ordered Father. ‘Kowtow.’

  He fell to his knees and kowtowed.

  ‘Take a drink!’

  He scooped up a handful of wine and drank it.

  Trickles of blood, like threads, sank to the bottom of the vat, on the surface of which a tiny white cloud floated alongside the sombre faces of Grandma and Father. Piercing rays emanated from Grandma’s eyes; Father looked away, his heart pounding wildly. He reached out to scoop up some more wine, and as it dripped through his fingers it shattered one large face and one small one amid the blue sky and white cloud. He drank a mouthful, which left the sticky taste of blood on his tongue. The blood sank to the base of the vat, where it congealed into a turbid clot the size of a fist. Father and Grandma stared at it long and hard; then she pulled the lid over it and rolled the millstone back, straining to place it on top of the lid.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ she said.

  Looking at the accumulation of mud and grey-green sow-bugs squirming in the indentation of the millstone, he nodded, clearly disturbed by the sight.

  That night he lay on his kang listening to Grandma pace the yard. The patter of her footsteps and the rustling sorghum in the fields formed Father’s confused dreams, in which he heard the brays of our two handsome black mules.

  Father awoke once, at dawn, and ran naked into the yard to pee; there he saw Grandma staring transfixed into the sky. He called out, ‘Mom,’ but his shout fell on deaf ears. When he’d finished peeing, he took her by the hand and led her inside. She followed meekly. They’d barely stepped inside when they heard waves of commotion from the southeast, followed by the crack of rifle fire, like the pop of a tautly stretched piece of silk pierced by a sharp knife.

  Shortly after he and Grandma heard the gunfire, they were herded over to the dike, along with a number of villagers – elderly, young, sick, and disabled – by Japanese soldiers. The polished white flagstones, boulders, and coarse yellow gravel on the dike looked like a line of grave mounds. Last year’s early-summer sorghum stood spellbound beyond the dike, sombre and melancholy. The outline of the highway shining through the trampled sorghum stretched due north. The stone bridge hadn’t been erected then, and the little wooden span stood utterly exhausted and horribly scarred by the passage of tens of thousands of tramping feet and the iron shoes of horses and mules. The smell of green shoots released by the crushed and broken sorghum, steeped in the night mist, rose pungent in the morning air. Sorghum everywhere was crying bitterly.

  Father, Grandma, and the other villagers – assembled on the western edge of the highway, south of the river, atop the shattered remnants of sorghum plants – faced a mammoth enclosure that looked like an animal pen. A crowd of shabby labourers huddled beyond it. Two puppet soldiers herded the labourers over near Father and the others to form a second cluster. The two groups faced a square where animals were tethered, a spot that would later make people pale with fright. They stood impassively for some time before a thin-faced, white-gloved Japanese officer with red insignia on his shoulders and a long sword at his hip emerged from the tent, leading a guard dog, whose red tongue lolled from the side of its mouth. Behind the dog, two puppet soldiers carried the rigid corpse of a Japanese soldier. Two Japanese soldiers brought up the rear, escorting two puppet soldiers who were dragging a beaten and bloody Uncle Arhat. Father huddled close to Grandma; she wrapped her arms around him.

  Fifty or so white birds, wings flapping noisily, sliced through the blue sky above the Black Water River, then turned and headed east, towards the golden sun. Father could see the draught animals, with scraggly hair and filthy faces, and our two black mules, which lay on the ground. One was d
ead, the hoe still stuck in its head. The blood-soaked tail of the other mule swept the ground; the skin over its belly twitched noisily; its nostrils whistled as they opened and closed. How Father loved those two black mules.

  He remembers Grandma sitting proudly on the mule’s back, Father in her lap, the three of them flying down the narrow dirt path through the sorghum field, the mule rocking back and forth as it gallops along, giving Father and Grandma the ride of their lives. Spindly legs conquer the dust of the road as Father shouts excitedly. An occasional peasant amid the sorghum, hoe in hand, gazes at the powdery, fair face of the distillery owner, his heart filled with envy and loathing.

  Now one of the mules was lying dead on the ground, its mouth open, a row of long white teeth chewing the earth. The other sat suffering more than its dead comrade. ‘Mom,’ Father said to Grandma, ‘our mules.’ She covered his mouth with her hand.

  The body of the Japanese soldier was placed before the officer, who continued to hold the dog’s leash. The two puppet soldiers dragged the battered Uncle Arhat over to a wooden rack. Father didn’t recognise him right away; he seemed just a strange, bloody creature in human form. As he was dragged up to the rack, his head turned to the left, then to the right, the crusty scab on his scalp looking like the shiny mud on the riverbank, baked by the sun until it wrinkles and begins to crack. His useless feet traced patterns in the dirt. The crowd slowly recoiled. Father felt Grandma’s hands grip his shoulders tightly. The people seemed to shrink in size, their faces clay-coloured or black. Crows and sparrows suddenly silenced, the people could hear the panting of the guard dog. The officer holding its leash farted loudly. Before the puppet soldiers dragged the strange creature over to the rack, they dropped it to the ground, an inert slab of meat.

  ‘Uncle Arhat!’ Father cried out in alarm.

  Grandma covered his mouth again.

  Uncle Arhat began to writhe, arching his buttocks as he rose to his knees, propped himself on his hands, and raised his arms. His face was so puffy the skin shone; his eyes were slits through which thin greenish rays emerged. Father was sure Uncle Arhat could see him. His heart was pounding against the wall of his chest – thump thump thump – and he didn’t know if it was from fear or anger. He wanted to scream, but Grandma’s hand was clasped too tightly over his mouth.