Sima Ku, having lost the argument, cursed angrily, “This goddamned ass of mine, I wonder if it will ever heal.”
“I’d be happy if it never healed,” Sima Ting said heatedly. “You’ll give me a lot less trouble that way.” Turning to leave, he spotted a smiling Sha Yueliang standing at the door. Yao Si stepped forward, but before he could make the introductions, Sha announced, “Corps Head Sima, I am Sha Yueliang.”
Sima Ku rolled over in bed before his brother could react. “I’ll be damned, so you’re Sha Yueliang, nicknamed Sha the Monk.”
“At present I am the commander of the Black Donkey Musket Band,” Sha replied. “My thanks to the Sima brothers for setting the bridge on fire. You and I, hand in glove.”
“So you’re still alive, are you? What sort of birdshit battles are you fighting these days?”
“Ambushes!” Sha said.
“Ambushes, is it? If not for me and my torch, you’d have been trampled into the mud!” Sima Ku said.
“I have a salve for treating burns,” Sha said with a broad smile. “I’ll have one of my men bring it over.”
“Lay out some food,” Sima Ting instructed Yao Si, “to welcome Commander Sha.”
Yao Si replied timidly, “All our money went to set up the Peace Preservation Corps.”
“How stupid can you be?” Sima Ting said. “The Imperial Army doesn’t serve our family alone, it serves eight hundred households. And the musket band was raised not for our family, but for all the citizens of the township. Get every family to contribute some food and money, since these men are the people’s guests. We’ll supply the wine and liquor.”
“Corps Head Sima serves two masters well, and gains equally from both.”
“What can I do?” Sima Ting pleaded. “As old Pastor Malory said, ‘Who will go to Hell, if not me?’“
Pastor Malory took the lid of his pot and dumped noodles made of the new flour into the boiling water, then stirred them with chopsticks before replacing the lid. “The fire needs to be a little hotter,” he shouted to Mother, who nodded and stuffed more golden, fragrant wheat stalks into the belly of the stove. Without letting go of the nipple, I looked down at the flames licking out of the stove and listened to the stalks crackle and pop as I thought back to what had just happened: They had laid me in the basket — on my back at first, although I quickly rolled over onto my belly, so I could watch Mother roll the noodles. As her body moved up and down, those two full gourds on her chest bounced around, summoning me, passing me a secret sign. Sometimes they threw the two datelike heads together, as if kissing or whispering to one another. But most of the time they were bouncing up and down, bouncing and calling out, like a pair of happy white doves. I reached out to touch them, saliva oozing from my mouth. Then, all of a sudden, they turned bashful and edgy, as a blush fell over their faces and delicate pearls of sweat streamed down the valley between them. I saw a pair of blue lights dancing on them; they were spots of light from Pastor Malory’s eyes. Then two hands with blond hair reached out from the blue eyes to take my food from me, sending yellow flames leaping from my heart. I opened my mouth to cry, but that only made things worse. The tiny hands retreated back into Malory’s eyes, but the big hands attached to his arms reached out to Mother’s chest. He stood tall and massive behind her; those ugly hands reached around and covered the two white doves. He stroked their feathers with his coarse fingers, then pinched and scissored their heads. My poor gourds! My precious doves! They struggled to free their wings, then tucked them close to their bodies, close and tight, until they were as small as they were ever going to get, before pumping themselves up and spreading their wings, as if wanting desperately to fly away, all the way to the far ends of the wilderness, to the edge of the sky, floating gently up to be with the clouds, bathed by the winds and stroked by the sun, then to moan with the wind and sing with the sun, and finally to sink silently earthward and disappear into the depths of a lake. Loud wails burst from my throat; a river of tears clouded my eyes. Mother and Malory’s bodies writhed in unison, Mother moaned softly. “Let me go, you donkey. The baby’s crying.” “The little bastard,” Malory said resentfully.
Mother picked me up and rocked me nervously. “Precious,” she said sheepishly, “my son, what have I done to my own flesh and blood?” She stuck the white doves up under my nose, and I urgently, cruelly grabbed one of their heads with my lips. Big as my mouth was, I wished it were bigger still. It was like the mouth of a snake, and all I could think of was how to wrap it around my very own dove to keep it away from others. “Slow down, my baby.” Mother gently patted my bottom. I had one of them in my mouth and was grasping the other in my hands. It was a little red-eyed white rabbit, and when I pinched its ear, I felt its frantic heartbeat. “The little bastard,” Malory said with a sigh.
“Stop calling him a little bastard,” Mother said.
“That’s what he is,” Malory said.
“I’d like you to baptize him, then give him a name. This is his hundredth day.”
As he prepared the dough with a practiced hand, Malory said, “Baptize him? I’ve forgotten how. I’m making you noodles the way I learned from that Muslim woman.”
“How close were you two?” Mother asked him.
“We were just friends.”
“I don’t believe you!” Mother said.
Malory laughed hoarsely as he stretched and pulled the soft dough, then smacked it down on the chopping board. “Tell me!” Mother insisted. He smacked the dough again, then stretched and pulled it some more. Some of the time he pulled it like a bowstring and some of the time it looked as if he were pulling a snake out of its hole. Even Mother was surprised that a Westerner with such coarse hands could manage this Chinese action with such practiced dexterity. “Maybe,” he said, “I’m not Swedish after all, and my so-called past has been nothing but a dream. What do you think?” Mother smiled coldly. “I asked about you and that dark-eyed woman. Don’t change the subject.” Pastor Malory laid the dough out straight, as if this were all a childish game, then began waving it in and out, taut one moment and slack the next. The strawlike dough began to spiral and form a bundle; then, with a flick of his wrists, it fanned out like a horse’s tail. Mother praised his display of skill: “It takes a good woman to make noodles like that.” “All right,” Malory said, “young mother, stop those crazy thoughts. Once you get the fire going, I’ll cook these for you.” “And after we’re finished eating?” “After we’re finished, I’ll baptize the little bastard and give him a name.”
With a feigned show of anger, Mother said, “The real bastards are the sons you had with that Muslim woman.”
Mother’s words hung in the air as, in another place, Sha Yueliang and Sima Ting made a toast. They had reached the following agreement during the banquet: The donkeys belonging to the musket band would be stabled at the church; the men would be quartered with local families; and Sha Yueliang would personally choose a headquarters site after the meal.
Sha and four bodyguards followed Yao Si into our compound. My eldest sister, Laidi, caught his eye immediately as she stood beside the water vat casually combing her hair and gazing at her reflection in the water, white clouds in the blue sky as her backdrop. Having just passed through a peaceful summer with plenty to eat and nice clothes to wear, she had matured dramatically. Her breasts jutted out proudly, her once dry, brittle hair now had a dark sheen, her waist had narrowed and become soft and springy, and her buttocks curved upwards. In a hundred days she had shed the skin of a scrawny adolescent and been transformed into a lovely young woman, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. She had Mother’s high, fair nose, as well as her full breasts and lively buttocks. Rays of melancholy issued from the eyes of the lovely yet bashful young virgin as she gazed into the water vat and stroked her silken locks with a wooden comb, her graceful reflection displaying myriad melancholies. Sha Yueliang was shaken to the depths of his soul. “This will be the headquarters of the Black Donkey Musket Band,” he said decisi
vely to Yao Si. “Shangguan Laidi,” Yao Si called out, “where’s your mother?” Sha dismissed Yao with a wave of his hand before the girl could answer. He walked up to the water vat and looked long and hard at Laidi. She returned the look. “Remember me, girl?” he asked. She nodded, her cheeks reddening.
My sister then turned and ran into the house. After the fifth day of the fifth month, my seven sisters had moved into the room once occupied by Shangguan Lü and Shangguan Fulu. Their former room was now being used to store three thousand catties of millet. Sha Yueliang followed Laidi into the house, where he saw the other six girls asleep on the kang. With a friendly smile, he said, “Don’t be afraid, we’re anti-Japanese fighters who bring no harm to the local populace. You have seen how we fight. That was a heroic battle, heroic and tragic, fiercely fought, the glory of the ages, and the day will come when people act out our exploits and sing our praises.” Eldest Sister lowered her head and twisted the tip of her braid as she recalled the uncommon events of the fifth day of the fifth month, how the man standing in front of her now had peeled away, strip by strip, the tattered remnants of his uniform. “Little girl — no, young mistress, we are linked by fate!” he announced before walking back outside. My sister followed him as far as the doorway and watched him first enter the side room to the east, then the room to the west. In the west room he was startled by the green light in the eyes of Shangguan Lü. Holding his nose, he quickly backed out of the room and gave an order to his troops: “Make some room by stacking the grain and find me a place to sleep.” My sister leaned up against the doorframe as she observed this skinny, stooped, dark-skinned man who looked like a scholar tree that had been struck by lightning. “Where is your father?” he asked her. Yao Si, who was lying low next to the wall, replied solicitously, “Her father was killed on the fifth day of the fifth month by the Jap devils — no, I mean the Imperial Army. Her grandfather, Shangguan Fulu, died the same day.”
“Imperial Army, did you say? Japs! Little Jap devils!” Sha
Yueliang roared, stomping his foot to express his loathing. “Young mistress,” he said, “your debt of vengeance, deep as a sea of blood, is our debt, and we will exact it one day, that I promise you. Who is the head of your family now?”
“Shangguan Lu,” Yao Si answered for her.
Meanwhile, Eighth Sister and I were being baptized.
The door of Pastor Malory’s residence opened directly onto the church, where faded oil paintings hung on the wall. Most were of naked winged infants, plump as fat yams. It wasn’t until later that I learned they were called angels. At the far end stood a brick pulpit, a carving from a heavy piece of jujube of a bare-chested man hanging in front. Owing either to the poor skills of the carver or to the hardness of the wood, the hanging man didn’t look much like a man at all. I later learned that it was our Lord Jesus, an amazing hero, a true saint. A dozen or so dusty pews, replete with bird droppings, were scattered here and there in front of the pulpit. Mother walked in with me in one arm and Eighth Sister in the other, startling the resident sparrows, which flew off and banged into the windows. The church’s front door opened onto the street. Through the cracks in the door, Mother could see a number of black donkeys shuttling back and forth outside.
Pastor Malory was holding a large wooden basin half filled with hot water in which a loofah floated. Steam rose from the basin, through which his slitted eyes showed. Bent over by the weight of the basin, he walked unsteadily, his neck thrust out. When he stumbled, water splashed into his face. But he regained his balance and shuffled on, until he was able to place the baptismal basin on the pulpit.
Mother walked up and handed us to him. He placed me in the basin, my feet curling inward the moment they touched the hot water. My tearful cries reverberated in the dreary emptiness of the church. Baby swallows in a white nest in the rafters craned their necks over the edge to watch me with their black, beady eyes; just then their parents flew in through one of the broken windows with worms in their broad beaks. After handing me back to Mother, Malory knelt and stirred the water with one of his large hands. The jujube Lord Jesus observed us warmly from where he hung. The angels on the walls were chasing the sparrows from the beams to the crossbeams, from the eastern wall to the western wall, from the spiral wooden staircase up to the rickety bell tower, and from the bell tower back down to the walls, where they rested. Crystalline beads of sweat oozed from their glistening buttocks. The water swirled in the basin, creating a little eddy in the center. Malory tested the water with his hand. “Okay,” he said, “it has cooled down. Put him in.”
They had taken off my clothes; Mother’s plentiful, nutritious milk had made me fat and fair-skinned. If I’d changed my look of sadness into one of anger or I’d worn a solemn smile, and if I’d had a pair of wings on my back, I’d have been an angel, and those fat little infants on the walls would have been my brothers. I stopped crying as soon as Mother laid me in the basin, because the water was so comfortably warm. I sat up and played in the water, shrieking happily as it splashed all over the place. Malory fished his bronze crucifix out of the water and pressed it down on my head. “From this moment on,” he said, “you are one of God’s beloved sons. Hallelujah!” Then he picked up the water-laden loofah and squeezed it over my head. “Hallelujah!” Mother parroted Malory: “Hallelujah!” she said, and I laughed joyfully as the holy water bathed my head.
Mother was beaming as she laid Eighth Sister in the basin with me, then picked up the loofah and gently washed us both as Pastor Malory ladled water over our heads. I shrieked happily with each ladleful, while Eighth Sister sobbed hoarsely. I kept grabbing my dark, scrawny twin.
“They don’t have names yet,” Mother said. “That’s your job.”
Pastor Malory put down his ladle. “This is nothing to be taken lightly. I need time to think.”
“My mother-in-law said that if I have a boy I should call him Little Dog Shangguan,” Mother said. “He would grow up better with a humble name.”
Pastor Malory shook his head vigorously. “No, that’s no good. Names like dog or cat are an affront to God. They also go against the teachings of Confucius, who said, ‘Without proper names, language cannot speak the truth.’“
“I have one,” Mother said. “See what you think. We can call him Shangguan Amen.”
Malory laughed. “That is even worse. Stop trying, and let me think.”
Pastor Malory stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, and began pacing feverishly in the rank atmosphere of the run-down church. His quick steps were the outward manifestation of the churning in his head, through which all manner of names and symbols — ancient and modern, Chinese and Western, heavenly and mundane — flowed. As she observed his pacing, Mother smiled and said to me, “Look at your godfather. That’s no way to think up a name. He looks like he’s about to declare a death.” Humming to herself, Mother picked up Malory’s ladle, scooped up some water, and poured it over our heads.
“I’ve got it!” he announced loudly as he stopped in his twenty-ninth trip to the closed front door of the church. “What will it be?” Mother asked excitedly. But before he could tell her, there was a clamor at the door. The noise of a crowd erupted, making the door rattle. Someone out there was shouting and carrying on. Mother stood up, seized with terror, the ladle still in her hand. Malory put his eye up to the crack in the door. At the time we didn’t know what was happening, but we saw his face redden, either from anger or nervousness, we didn’t know which. He turned to Mother. “Leave, quickly. To the courtyard out front.”
Mother bent down to pick me up. She first threw away the ladle, of course, which bounced around noisily on the floor, like a bullfrog in mating season. Left behind in the basin, Eighth Sister began to bawl. The bolt snapped in two and clattered to the floor as the double doors burst open, and a shaven-headed young man holding a musket exploded into the church. He butted Malory in the chest, sending him reeling back all the way to the rear wall. A bare-bottomed angel was suspended above hi
s head. When the door bolt clattered to the floor, I tumbled out of Mother’s arms and thudded back into the basin, sending a spray of water skyward and nearly crushing the life out of Eighth Sister.
Altogether five musket soldiers swarmed in, but their brutal arrogance dissolved as they took in the sights of the church. The one who had nearly butted Pastor Malory into the next world scratched his head. “There are people here. Why is that?” He glanced at his four comrades. “Didn’t they say the church had been abandoned years ago? How come there are people here?”
Covering his chest with his hands, Malory walked up to the soldiers, who were frightened and embarrassed by his dignified appearance. If he had spewed forth a string of foreign words and made a flurry of hand gestures, the soldiers might well have turned on their heels and run out of the church. Even speaking Chinese with a heavy foreign accent would have stopped them from turning violent. But the unfortunate Pastor Malory spoke to them in perfect Northeast Gaomi Chinese: “What do you want, my brothers?” He bowed deeply to them.
As I lay there crying — Eighth Sister had stopped crying by then — the soldiers burst out laughing. Sizing up Pastor Malory as if he were a performing monkey, a soldier with a crooked mouth reached out and tickled the hairs in Malory’s ear with his finger.
“A monkey, ha ha, he’s a monkey.” His comrades joined in: “Look, this monkey’s even hiding a woman in here!”
“I object!” Malory shouted. “I object! I am a foreigner!”
“A foreigner, did you all hear that?” the crooked-mouthed soldier said. “Are you telling me a foreigner can speak perfect Northeast Gaomi Chinese? I think you’re the bastard offspring of a monkey and a human. Bring in one of the donkeys, men.”