Red Sorghum

  ‘Are you afraid of dying?’ Commander Yu had asked him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When he says yes he means no, Commander,’ Wang’s wife had explained. ‘Japanese planes bombed our three sons into pulp.’

  Wang Wenyi was not cut out to be a soldier. His reactions were slow, and he couldn’t tell his right from his left. During marching drills on the parade ground, he was hit by Adjutant Ren more times than you could count. His wife had an idea: he would carry a sorghum stem in his right hand, so when he heard a right-turn command he’d turn in that direction. Since he had no weapon, Grandma gave him our fowling piece.

  When the women reached the bank of the twisting Black Water River they headed south, without stopping to enjoy the chrysanthemums on the bank or the dense thickets of blood-red sorghum beyond it. Wang Wenyi’s wife had lived a life of suffering, Grandma one of privilege. Grandma was drenched with sweat, Wang Wenyi’s wife was as dry as a bone.

  Father had since returned to the bridgehead, where he reported to Commander Yu that the fistcakes would be there soon. Commander Yu patted him on the head for a job well done. Most of the soldiers lay around the sorghum field, soaking up the sun. Growing fidgety with impatience, Father strolled over to the field west of the road to see what Mute and his troops were up to. Mute was still honing his knife, so Father stopped in front of him, his hand resting on the Browning at his belt, a victor’s smile on his face. Mute looked up and grinned broadly.

  Father presumed that the four linked rakes blocking the road, their teeth pointing skyward, must have reached the limits of their patience. The stone bridge spanning the river looked like an invalid just beginning his recovery. Father walked up to the dike and sat down, looking first east, then west, then to the river flowing beneath him, and finally to some wild ducks. The river was beautiful, owing to its profusion of living plants and tiny whitecaps, each filled with mystery. He spotted piles of white bones resting in thickets of reeds, and remembered our two big black mules.

  In the spring, throngs of rabbits run wild in the fields. Grandma rides her mule, rifle in hand, as she hunts rabbits, with Father sitting behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist. Frightened by the mule, the rabbits fall easy prey to Grandma’s shots. She invariably returns home with a string of rabbits around the mule’s neck. A steel pellet once lodged between two of her back teeth when she was eating wild rabbit, and no amount of prying could dislodge it.

  Father watched a column of dark red ants transport mud pebbles across the dike. When he laid a clod of earth in their way, they strained to climb over it instead of skirting it. He picked it up and heaved it into the river, where it broke the surface without a sound. Now that the sun was overhead, a fishy smell drifted over on the hot air. Bright glimmers of light flashed everywhere and made the area sizzle. It seemed to Father that the space between heaven and earth was filled with the red dust of sorghum and the fragrance of sorghum wine. He stretched out on the dike, face up, and in that moment his heart leaped into his throat; later on he realised that patience is always rewarded, and that the consequences of his waiting were perfectly common, ordinary, casual, and natural. For he had spotted four strange dark-green, beetlelike objects crawling noiselessly towards him on the highway that cut through the sorghum fields.

  ‘Trucks,’ he muttered ambiguously. He was ignored.

  ‘Jap trucks!’ He scrambled to his feet, panic-stricken, and stared at the trucks streaking towards him like meteors, trailing long dark tails and preceded by crackling, swaying incandescent rays of light.

  ‘Here come the trucks!’ His words were a sword that decapitated the men with a single stroke. A dull silence settled over the sorghum field.

  ‘Men,’ Commander Yu roared joyfully, ‘they’re here after all. Get ready. And don’t fire until I give the order.’

  On the west side of the road Mute jumped to his feet and slapped himself on the hip. Dozens of guerrillas crouched on the slope, weapons ready. They could hear the roar of the engines. Father lay at Commander Yu’s side, gripping the heavy Browning so tightly that his wrist was soon hot and tingly, his palm sticky with sweat. The fleshy place between his thumb and forefinger twitched once, and was soon racked with spasms. In amazement, he watched the almond-sized spot jump rhythmically, like a chick trying to break out of its egg. He wanted to stop it, but was squeezing so tightly his arm began to tremble. Commander Yu laid his hand on Father’s back, and the twitch stopped. He switched the Browning to his left hand, but the muscles of his right hand were so cramped it seemed forever before he could straighten his fingers.

  The fast-approaching trucks were getting larger and larger, the eyes in front, as large as horse hooves, sweeping the area with their white rays. Their revving engines sounded like the wind before a downpour. Having never actually seen a truck before, Father assumed that these strange creatures survived on grass or some sort of fodder, and that they drank water or blood. They moved faster than our two strong, spindly-legged mules; the moon-shaped tiers spun so fast they sent clouds of yellow dust soaring into the air. As they neared the stone bridge, the lead truck slowed down, allowing the clouds of dust to catch up and settle over the hood, obsuring the twenty or more khaki-clad men in the bed, shiny steel pots on their heads. Father subsequently learned that these pots were called ‘helmets’. (In 1958, during the backyard-furnace campaign of the Great Leap Forward, when our wok was confiscated, my elder brother swiped a helmet from a pile of metal and brought it home to use as a cookpot. Father watched in fascination as the helmet changed colour in the smoke and fire.)

  The two trucks in the middle were stacked with small mountains of white sacks; the one bringing up the rear, like the one in front, was loaded with twenty or more Japanese soldiers.

  They had nearly reached the dike, and their tyres, spinning more slowly now, appeared swollen and awkward. The square nose of the lead truck reminded Father of the head of an enormous locust. As the yellow dust began to settle, loud farts created a dark-blue mist at the rear.

  Father scrunched his head down as a chill the likes of which he’d never known worked its way up from his feet to his belly. He shifted his buttocks back and forth to keep from wetting his pants. ‘Don’t move, you little shit!’ Commander Yu complained sternly.

  Feeling as though his bladder were about to burst, Father got permission to crawl down and pee.

  Once he had retreated into the sorghum field he released a mighty stream the colour of red sorghum, which stung the head of his pecker as it gushed forth. Enormously relieved when he had finished, he glanced casually at the guerrillas’ faces, whose expressions made them appear as malevolent and scary as temple icons. Wang Wenyi’s tongue poked out between his lips; his staring eyeballs seemed frozen, like a lizard’s.

  The trucks, huge beasts on the prowl, held their breath as they crept forward. Something aromatic struck Father’s nostrils. Just then Grandma, in her sweat-stained red silk jacket, and the panting wife of Wang Wenyi appeared on the dike of the meandering Black Water River.

  Grandma with her baskets of fistcakes and Wang Wenyi’s wife with her pails of mung-bean soup gazed at the miserable stone bridge across the Black Water River, feeling very much at ease. Grandma turned to Wang’s wife and said with relief, ‘We made it, Sister-in-Law.’ Ever since her marriage, Grandma had lived a life of ease and comfort and the carrying pole, with its heavy load of fistcakes, dug deeply into her delicate shoulder, leaving a dark-purple bruise that would accompany her as she departed this world and travelled to the kingdom of heaven. The bruise would be the glorious symbol of a heroic figure from the war of resistance.

  Father was the first to see her. While the others were following the slow progress of the trucks with unblinking eyes, some secret force told him to look to the west, where he spotted her floating towards them like a gorgeous red butterfly. ‘Mom –’

  His shout was like a command: a hail of bullets tore through the air from three machine guns mounted on the Japanese trucks. The s
ound was dull and muted, like the gloomy barking of dogs on a rainy night. Father watched as two shells opened holes in the breast of Grandma’s jacket. She cried out in ecstasy, then crumpled to the ground, her carrying pole falling across her back. One of the baskets of fistcakes rolled down the southern slope of the dike, the other down the northern slope. Snow-white cakes, green onions, and diced eggs were scattered in the grass on both sides of the dike.

  After Grandma fell, a mixture of red and yellow fluid from the boxy skull of Wang Wenyi’s wife sprayed the area all the way to the sorghum stalks beside the dike. Father watched the diminutive woman stagger backward as the bullet hit her, then topple down the southern slope of the dike and roll into the water. The contents of one pail of mung-bean soup spilled onto the ground, followed by the second, like the blood of heroes. The first pail clanked down the dike into the Black Water River, then bobbed to the surface. It floated down past Mute, banged one or two times into a stanchion, then was picked up by the current and carried past Commander Yu, past my father, past Wang Wenyi, past Fang Six and Fang Seven.

  ‘Mom –’ Father screamed as though his guts were being ripped out as he leaped to the top of the dike. Commander Yu tried to grab him, but was too late. ‘Come back here!’ he bellowed. Father didn’t hear the command, he didn’t hear anything. His skinny little frame flew along the narrow ridge of the dike, shimmering in the sun’s rays. He threw down his Browning pistol, which landed amid the torn leaves of a golden bitterweed. He ran like the wind, his arms thrust out in front like wings, as he ran towards Grandma. The dike was still, but dust swirled noisily; the glimmering water stopped flowing. The sorghum beyond the dike remained dignified and solemn. Father was still running along the dike: Father was a giant, Father was magnificent, Father was gorgeous. He screamed at the top of his lungs: ‘Mom – Mom – Mom –’ A single word drenched with human blood and tears, with deep familial love, with the loftiest of causes. When he reached the end of the eastern dike, he jumped over the rake barrier and scrambled up the western bank. Beneath the dike, the stony face of Mute sped by.

  Father threw himself down on Grandma and called out ‘Mom!’ one more time. She lay face down on the ground, pressed against the wild grass. The aroma of sorghum wine seeped from two exit wounds in her back. Father gripped her shoulders and rolled her over. There were no wounds on her face, which looked the same as always. Not a hair was out of place; her fringe neatly covered her forehead; her brows drooped slightly. Her eyes were half open; the lips on her pale face showed up bright-red. Father grasped her warm hand and called ‘Mom!’ yet another time. She opened her eyes wide as a smile of supreme innocence spread across her face. She reached out to him.

  The idling engines of the Jap trucks, which had stopped at the bridgehead, revved intermittently.

  A tall figure appeared briefly on the dike to drag Father and Grandma down off the top. It was Mute, to his everlasting credit. Before Father had a chance to get his bearings, another gale of bullets truncated and smashed countless stalks of sorghum.

  The four trucks closed up ranks just beyond the bridge, then stopped. Eight machine guns mounted on the first and last trucks were spraying so many bullets they formed hard ribbons of crisscrossing light that spread like broken fans, sometimes to the east of the road, sometimes to the west. Sorghum stalks wailed in concert, their shattered, severed limbs drooping low or arching high into the air. Bullets raised puffs of yellow dust on the dike and produced a tattoo of muffled thuds.

  The soldiers on the outer slopes flattened themselves against the wild grass and black dirt, keeping perfectly still. The machine guns strafed the area for about three minutes, then stopped as abruptly as they had begun. The ground around the trucks was littered with the golden flashes of spent casings.

  ‘Hold your fire,’ Commander Yu ordered softly.

  The Japs were silent. Thin wisps of gunsmoke floated above the river, carried eastward by gentle air currents.

  Father told me that in that moment of absolute quiet Wang Wenyi stumbled up onto the dike, where he stood stock-still, fowling piece in hand, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the picture of great suffering. ‘Mother of my children!’ he shrieked. Before he could take another step, dozens of machine-gun shells ripped a nearly transparent crescent moon in his belly. Gut-stained bullets tore wetly through the air above Commander Yu’s head.

  Wang Wenyi toppled off the dike and rolled into the water directly opposite the body of his wife. His heart was still beating, and there wasn’t a mark on his head or face; a sense of perfect understanding flooded his mind.

  Father once told me that Wang Wenyi’s wife had fed her three sons so well they grew up chubby, lively, and flourishing. One day they went out to tend the sorghum, leaving their sons behind to play in the yard. A Japanese biplane streaked through the air above their house, making a strange growling sound as it laid a single egg, a direct hit on Wang Wenyi’s yard, blowing all three children to bits that flew up to the eaves, were draped on the branches of trees, stained the wall.

  . . . On the day Commander Yu raised the flag of resistance against the Japanese, Wang Wenyi was brought over by his wife.

  Gnashing his teeth with rage, Commander Yu glared down at Wang Wenyi, half of whose head lay submerged in the river. ‘Don’t any of you move!’ he snarled in a low voice.

  8

  SCATTERED SORGHUM DANCES on Grandma’s face, one grain landing between her slightly parted lips to rest on flawless white teeth. As he gazes at her lips, which are gradually losing their colour, Father sobs ‘Mom,’ and his tears fall on her breast. She opens her eyes amid the pearly drops of sorghum. Rainbows of colour, as though reflected off the pearls, are embedded in her eyes. ‘Son,’ she says, ‘your dad . . .’

  ‘My dad, he’s fighting.’

  ‘He’s your real dad . . .’ Grandma says. Father nodds.

  She struggles to sit up, but the movement of her body pumps streams of blood out of the two holes.

  ‘Mom, I’ll go and get him,’ Father says.

  She waves her hand and sits up abruptly. ‘Douguan . . . my son . . . help your mom up. . . . Let’s go home, go home. . . .’

  Father falls to his knees, drapes her arms around his neck, then stands up with difficulty, lifting her off the ground. Fresh blood quickly soaks his neck and assails his nose with the aroma of sorghum wine. His legs tremble under the weight of her body; he staggers into the sorghum field as bullets whizz overhead. He parts the densely packed plants, stumbling forward, his sweat and his tears merging with Grandma’s fresh blood to turn his face into a demented mask. Grandma is getting heavier as the passing sorghum leaves lacerate him mercilessly. He falls, she falls on top of him. He strains to crawl out from under her, and after he lays her out on her back, she looks up, breathes a long sigh, and smiles weakly. Unfathomable mystery is embedded in that smile, an iron that burns a horseshoe brand into his memory.

  Grandma lies on the ground, the warmth of her breast slowly dissipating. She is dimly aware that her son is undoing her jacket, that he is covering the wound over her breast with his hand, then the wound beneath her breast. Her blood stains his hand red, then green; her unsullied breast is stained green by her own blood, then red. Bullets have pierced her noble breast, exposing the pink honeycomb beneath it, and Father is in agony as he looks down at it. He cannot staunch the flow of blood, and as he watches it flow he can see her face pale. Her body grows so light it might float up into the air.

  Grandma looks contentedly at Father’s exquisite face. She and Commander Yu had joined to create him in the shadows of the sorghum field; lively images of the irretrievable past streak past her eyes like racehorses.

  It was raining as she sat in the bridal sedan chair, like a boat on the ocean, and was carried into Shan Tingxiu’s compound. The street was flooded with water, peppered by a layer of sorghum seeds. At the front door she was met by a wizened old man with a tiny queue in the shape of a kidney bean. The rain had stopped, but an occasional drop spla
shed onto the watery ground. Although the musicians had announced her arrival with their instruments, no one had emerged to watch the show; Grandma knew that was a bad sign. Two men came out to help her perform her obeisances, one in his fifties, the other in his forties. The fifty-year-old was none other than Uncle Arhat Liu, the other was one of the distillery hands.

  The musicians and bearers stood in the puddles like drenched chickens, sombrely watching the two dried-up men lead my soft-limbed, rosy-cheeked grandma into the dark wedding-chamber. The men exuded a pungent aroma of wine, as if they had been soaked in the vats.

  Grandma was taken up to a kang in the worship hall and told to sit on it. Since no one came up to remove her red veil, she took it off herself. A man with a facial tic sat curled up on a stool next to her. The bottom part of his flat, elongated face was red and festering. He stood up and stuck a clawlike hand out towards Grandma, who screamed in horror and reached into her bodice for the scissors; she glared intently at the man, who recoiled and curled up on the stool again. Grandma didn’t set down her scissors once that night, nor did the man climb down from his stool.

  Early the next morning, before the man woke up, Grandma slipped down off the kang, burst through the front door, and opened the gate; just as she was about to flee the premises, a hand reached out and grabbed her. The old man with the kidney-bean queue had her by the wrist and was looking at her with hate-filled eyes.

  Shan Tingxiu coughed dryly once or twice as his expression softened. ‘Child,’ he said, ‘now that you’re married, you’re like my own daughter. Bianlang doesn’t have what everybody says. Don’t listen to their talk. We’ve got a good business, and Bianlang’s a good boy. Now that you’re here, the home is your responsibility.’ Shan Tingxiu held out to her a ring of bronze keys, but she didn’t take them from him.

  Grandma sat up all the next night, scissors in hand.