In fact, there were many people in the village who grew tired of eating wild rabbit over that bitter winter. The plump little rabbits crawled across the snowy ground like maggots, so lethargic even women with bound feet easily caught them. These were golden days for foxes. Owing to the ongoing battles, all the hunting rifles had been confiscated by guerrillas of one stripe or another, depriving the villagers of their most effective weapons; the battles also had a debilitating effect on the villagers’ mood, so that during the peak hunting season, the foxes did not have to fear for their lives as they had in years past. Over the long, seemingly endless nights, every female was pregnant, as the foxes cavorted freely in the marshes. Their mournful cries had people constantly on edge.
Using a pole, my third and fourth sisters lugged a big wooden bucket down to the Flood Dragon River, followed by my second sister carrying a sledgehammer. As they passed the home of Aunty Sun, their eyes were drawn to the yard, which was dreary beyond imagining, with no sign of life. A flock of crows lined the wall, a reminder of all that had happened there. The excitement back then was long gone, as were the mutes, to destinations unknown. The girls walked through knee-deep snow to the riverbank, observed by several raccoon dogs in the scrub brush. The sun was in the southeastern sky, its slanting rays glistening on the riverbed. Ice near the bank was white, and walking on it was like stepping on crispy flatcakes, crackling under their feet — ge-ge zha-zha. Out in the center the ice was light blue, hard, smooth, and glossy. My sisters walked gingerly across it, and when my fourth sister slipped and fell, she pulled my second sister, who was holding her hand, down with her. The bucket and hammer crashed loudly on the ice, which made the girls giggle.
Second Sister picked out a clean patch of ice and attacked it with the sledgehammer, which had been in the Shangguan family for generations, raising it high over her head with her thin arms and bringing it down hard; the sharp, hollow sounds of steel on ice flew through the air and made the paper covering of our window quiver. Mother rubbed the top of my head, with its yellow fuzz, and then stroked the fur of my coat. “Little Jintong,” she said, “little Jintong, sister’s making a big hole in the ice. She’ll bring back a bucket of water and pour out half a bucket of fish.” My eighth sister, wrapped in her lynx coat, lay huddled in a corner of the kang, smiling awkwardly, like a furry little Goddess of Mercy. Second Sister’s first hit produced a white dot the size of a walnut; several splinters of ice stuck to the head of the hammer. She raised it again, straining to get it over her head, then brought it down unsteadily. Another white dot appeared on the ice, this one several feet away from the first one. By the time twenty or more white dots covered the patch of ice, Zhaodi was gasping for breath, as long, dense puffs of white mist shot from her mouth. She raised the hammer once more, but in using the last bit of strength to bring it down, she fell headlong onto the ice. Her face was ashen, her thick lips were now bright red; her eyes misted up, and the tip of her nose was dotted with crystalline beads of sweat.
By then my third and fourth sisters were muttering, voicing discontent over their elder sister as gusts of wind from the north swept across the riverbed and sliced into their faces like knives. Second Sister stood up, spit in her hands, picked up the sledgehammer again, and brought it down on the ice. But the next swing sent her sprawling on the ice a second time.
Just as they were gathering up the bucket and carrying pole and were about to head home dejected, resigned to the fact that they would have to continue using melted snow or ice to cook, a dozen or so horses pulling sleighs and leaving trails of icy mist galloped up on the frozen river. Owing to the bright rays of sunlight glancing off the ice and the fact that the horsemen rode in from the southeast, at first Second Sister thought they had coasted down to earth on those very rays of sunlight. They shone like golden sunbeams and were lightning quick. The horses’ hooves flashed like silver as they pummeled the ice, iron horseshoes filling the air with loud cracks and sending shards of ice flying into the faces of my sisters, who stood there gaping, too stupefied to even think about running away. The horses skirted them at a gallop before coming to a staggering halt on the slick ice. My sisters noticed that the sleighs were coated with thick yellow tung oil that shone like stained glass. Four men sat in each sleigh, all wearing hats made of fluffy fox fur. White frost coated their beards, their eyebrows, their eyelashes, and the fronts of their hats. Dense puffs of steamy mist emerged from their mouths and nostrils. Their horses were small and delicate, their legs covered with long hair. From their calm attitude, Second Sister guessed that they were legendary Mongol ponies. A tall, husky fellow jumped down off the second sleigh. He was wearing a sleek lambskin coat, open in front to reveal a leopardskin vest. The vest was girded by a wide leather belt, from which a holstered revolver hung on one side and a hatchet on the other. He alone was wearing a felt hat with flaps instead of a leather cap. Rabbit fur earmuffs covered his exposed ears. “Are you the daughters of the Shangguan family?” he asked.
The man standing before them was Sima Ku, assistant steward of Felicity Manor. “What are you doing out here?” He supplied his own answer before they could reply. “Ah, trying to break a hole in the ice. That’s no job for girls!” He turned and shouted to the men in the sleighs, “Climb down off there, all of you, and help my neighbors chop a hole in the ice. We’ll water these Mongol ponies while we’re at it.”
Dozens of bloated-looking men climbed down off the sleighs, coughing and spitting. Several of them knelt down, took out hatchets, and attacked the ice — pa pa. Splinters flew as cracks opened up. One of the men, whose face sported whiskers, felt the edge of his hatchet and, after blowing his nose, said, “Brother Sima, at this rate, we could work till it was dark and not break through the ice.” Sima Ku knelt down, took out his own hatchet, and attempted a few tentative whacks on the ice. “Damn!” he cursed. “It’s like steel plate.” The whiskered man said, “Elder brother, if we all empty our bladders on one spot, it’ll melt open a hole.” “You dumb prick!” Sima Ku cursed just as exhilaration swept over him. He smacked himself on his rear end — his lips cracked open, for the wound in his backside hadn’t yet completely healed — and said, “I’ve got it. Technician Jiang, come over here.” A bony little man walked up and looked into Sima Ku’s face, not saying a word. But his expression made it clear that he was waiting for orders. “Can that thing you’ve got cut through ice?” Jiang grinned contemptuously and said in a squeaky, ladylike voice, “Like smashing an egg with an iron hammer.”
“Hurry up, then,” Sima Ku said excitedly, “and give me sixty-four — that’s eight times eight — holes in this river of ice. Let my fellow villagers benefit from the presence of Sima Ku.” He turned to my sisters. “You girls stay put.”
Technician Jiang pulled back the canvas tarp covering the third sleigh, revealing two iron objects, painted green, in the shape of enormous artillery shells. With practiced movements, he freed a long plastic tube and wrapped it around the head of one of the objects. Then he looked at the round clock face; two pencil-thin red hands were ticking rhythmically. Finally, he put on a pair of canvas gloves, clicked a metal object that looked like a big opium pipe, attached to two rubber tubes, and gave it a twist. The thing sputtered into life. The technician’s helper, a skinny boy who could not have been more than fifteen, lit a match and touched it to the sputtering ends of the tubes. Blue flames the thickness of silkworm chrysalises shot out with a loud whoosh. He shouted an order to the youngster, who climbed onto the sleigh and twisted the heads of the two objects, quickly turning the blue flames blindingly white, brighter than sunlight. Technician Jiang picked up one of the intimidating objects and looked over at Sima Ku, who squinted as he raised his hand high, then sliced it down. “Start cutting!” he shouted.
Jiang bent over at the waist and aimed the white flame at the frozen surface. Milky white steam jetted a foot or more into the air, accompanied by loud sizzles. His arm controlled the action of his wrist; his wrist controlled the direction o
f the enormous opium pipe; and the opium pipe spat out white flames that burned a hole in the ice. He looked up. “There’s your hole,” he announced.
Somewhat doubtfully, Sima Ku bent down to look at the ice, and, sure enough, a chunk of ice the size of a millstone, surrounded by little chips, had been burned out of the surface, with river water swirling around it. Jiang then burned a cross in the chunk of ice with the white flame, dividing it into four pieces. When he stepped down on the detached pieces, each was carried away by the river below. Blue water gushed up from the neat hole.
“Neat,” Sima Ku praised the man, who was also the beneficiary of congratulatory looks from the men standing around him. “Now make some more holes for us,” Sima ordered.
Putting all his skills to work, Technician Jiang burned dozens of holes in the two-foot-thick ice covering the Flood Dragon River. They emerged in a variety of shapes: circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, trapezoids, octagons, and pear-blossom, all laid out like a page in a geometry textbook.
“Technician Jiang,” Sima Ku said, “you’ve tasted success! All right, men, back up on the sleds. We need to reach the bridge before dark. But first we’ll water the horses from the Flood Dragon River!”
The men led their horses up to the holes to drink from the river, as Sima Ku turned to Second Sister. “You’re the second daughter, aren’t you? Well, go home and tell your mother that one of these days I’m going to crush that donkey bastard Sha Yueliang and return your elder sister to the mute.”
“Do you know where she is?” my sister asked boldly.
“Sha Yueliang took her with him to sell opium. Him and that donkey-shit band of his.”
Not daring to ask any more, Second Sister watched as Sima Ku climbed up on his sled and headed off toward the west at full speed, followed by the other eleven sleds. They made a turn at the stone bridge over the Flood Dragon River and shot out of sight.
My sisters, still immersed in the miraculous sight they had just witnessed, no longer felt the cold. They stared at all the holes in the ice, from triangles to ovals, from ovals to squares, and from squares to rectangles … as the river water soaked their shoes and quickly turned to ice. The fresh air rising out of the holes filled their lungs. Feelings of reverence for Sima Ku washed over my second, third, and fourth sisters. Now that my eldest sister had served as a glorious model, a thought began to form in Second Sister’s immature brain — she would marry Sima Ku! But someone, it seemed, had warned her coldly that Sima Ku had three wives. All right, then, she thought, I’ll be his fourth! Just then Fourth Sister shouted: “Sister, a big meat stick!”
The so-called meat stick was in fact a silver-skinned eel that had risen to the surface and was writhing clumsily in the water. Its snakelike head was the size of a fist, its eyes cold and menacing, like those of a ferocious snake. As its head broke the surface, bubbles oozing from its mouth popped in the air. “It’s an eel!” Second Sister shouted, picking up her bamboo carrying pole and crashing it down on the head, the hook on the end sending water splashing. The eel’s head fell below the surface, but floated right back up. Its eyes were smashed. Second Sister swung again; this time the eel’s movements slowed and it stretched out stiffly. Throwing down her pole, Second Sister grabbed the head and dragged the eel out of the water. By then it was frozen stiff; it had indeed turned into a meat stick. The girls trudged home, with Third and Fourth Sisters carrying water and Second Sister carrying the hammer in one hand and the eel in the other.
Mother sawed off the eel’s tail and cut the body into eighteen parts, each severed chunk hitting the floor with a thunk. Then she boiled the Flood Dragon River eel in Flood Dragon River water and produced a mouthwatering soup. Beginning that day, Mother’s breasts were youthful again, though scars from the wrinkles mentioned earlier remained on the tips, like the crumpled pages of a book.
That night the delicious soup also lightened Mother’s mood and put a saintly look back on her face, like the merciful expression of the Guanyin Bodhisattva or the Virgin Mary, with my sisters seated around her lotus perch. Her loving children were with her on that peaceful night. Northern winds howled over the Flood Dragon River, turning our chimney into a whistle. Ice-covered branches of the trees in the yard cracked as they swayed in the wind; an icicle broke free of the house eave and shattered crisply on the laundry stone below.
On that same wonderful night, Sima Ku was crossing the metal railroad bridge over the Flood Dragon River, some thirty li from the village, and on the verge of adding a new chapter to the history of Northeast Gaomi Township. That rail line was the Jiaoji Line, built by the Germans. The Wolf and Tiger Brigade warriors had fought a heroic, bloody battle, employing every conceivable tactic to slow down the construction, but in the end they’d been unable to stop the unyielding steel road from slicing through the soft underbelly of Northeast Gaomi Township, dividing it in two. In the words of their forebear Sima the Urn: Goddamn it, that’s the same as slicing open the bellies of our women! The metal dragon had belched thick black smoke as it rolled through Northeast Gaomi, as if rolling right across our chests. Now the rail line was in the hands of the Japanese, who turned it to transport coal and cotton, ultimately for weapons and gunpowder to be turned on us.
Orion’s Belt was drifting west; a crescent moon hung just above the treetops. A punishing west wind swept over the frozen river, evoking creaks and groans from the steel bridge as it swayed. It was a bitterly, almost demonically, cold night, so cold that the ice kept cracking to create cobwebs over the surface of the river. The cracks were louder than gunfire. Sima Ku’s sled brigade reached the foot of the bridge and stopped at the river’s edge. Sima Ku jumped down off his sled, his backside feeling as if it had been clawed by a cat. Dim starlight made the river glimmer slightly, but the sky between the stars and the ice was so black you couldn’t see the fingers of your hand. He clapped his hands, the sound echoing around him from other clapping hands. The mysterious darkness energized and excited him. Later, when asked how he’d felt before destroying the bridge, he’d said, “Great, just like New Year’s.”
His troops groped hand in hand up to the bridge, where Sima Ku climbed onto one of the stanchions, took a pickax from his belt, and hacked away at one of the supports. Sparks flew and loud clangs rang out. “Legs of a whore!” he cursed. ” Nothing but steel.” A shooting star streaked across the sky, trailing a long tail and hissing as it filled the sky with lovely blue sparks, momentarily lighting up the space between heaven and earth. Thanks to the light of the shooting star, he had a good look at the cement stanchion and steel supports. “Technician Jiang,” he shouted, “come up here!” With a boost from his comrades, Jiang climbed onto the stanchion, followed by his young apprentice. Clumps of ice clung to the stanchion like mushrooms, and as Sima Ku reached out to take the boy’s hand, he slipped on the ice and crashed to the ground; the boy managed to stay atop the stanchion. Sima fell right on his backside, from which blood and pus had never stopped seeping out. “Oh, mother —” he screamed. “Dear mother, that hurts like hell!” His men ran up and helped him up off the ice. But that did not stop the screams of pain, screams loud enough to reach the heavens. “Elder brother,” one of them said, “you’re going to have to bear it as best you can. Don’t expose yourself.” That brought an end to the screams. As he stood there shuddering, Sima barked out an order: “Get on with it, Technician Jiang. Just make cuts in a few of them and we’ll leave. The painkilling medication that damned Sha Yueliang gave me is only making it worse.” One of his men said, “Elder brother, I think that’s what he had in mind, and you fell for it.” Sima replied testily, “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the saying that ‘when you’re sick, any doctor will do’?” “Bear it the best you can, elder brother,” the man repeated. “I’ll take care of the problem once we get home. There’s nothing better for burns than badger oil. Works every time.”
Whoosh. An explosion of blue sparks, white around the edges, erupted amid the bridge supports, so bright it broug
ht tears to the men’s eyes. Gaps in the bridge, bridge stanchions, steel supports, dogskin overcoats, foxskin caps, yellow sleds and Mongol ponies, and everything around the bridge came into full view, even a single hair that had fallen onto the ice. The two people on the bridge, Technician Jiang and the young apprentice, were hunkering down on the steel support like a pair of monkeys, their “big opium pipe” spewing white-hot flames as it cut into the metal. White smoke curled upward as the riverbed gave off the strangely fragrant odor of burning metal. Sima Ku watched the sparks and arc lights in rapt fascination, forgetting the pain in his backside. The sparking flames ate through the metal like silkworms consuming mulberry leaves. In hardly any time at all, a piece of the support fell from the bridge and stuck at an angle in the thick ice below. “Cut, cut, cut the fucking thing to pieces!” Sima Ku bellowed.