Laidi fidgeted in her seat as if she was sitting on needles, making the legs of her chair creak and groan. The blood had drained from her face and her hands shook as she gripped the arms of the chair.
“Commander Sha’s cavalry troops have entered our minefield,” Commissar Jiang said sympathetically. “What a pity, all those fine horses.”
“You … you’re all living in a dream world …” First Sister stood up with her hands on the arms of the chair, but fell back into it as an even denser series of explosions split the air.
Commissar Jiang stood up and rapped leisurely on the wooden lattice separating the room from the main house and said, as if to himself, “Korean pine, all of it. I wonder how many trees were cut down just to build the Sima manor.” He raised his head to look at First Sister. “How many would you say? Support beams, crossbeams, doors and windows, flooring, walls, tables and chairs and benches …” She squirmed in her chair. “I’d say at least one whole forest!” Commissar Jiang remarked, a note of distress in his voice, as if a forest lay before him, reduced to stumps and scattered branches. “Sooner or later, these accounts will be settled,” he said dejectedly, putting the denuded forest behind him, as he walked up to First Sister and stood, legs spread, his right hand on his hip, wrist at a sharp angle. “Of course,” he said, “as we see it, Sha Yueliang is not someone dead set on being a turncoat. He was once a glorious anti-Japanese resistance fighter, and if he renounces his recent past, we are more than willing to call him comrade. Mrs. Sha, he’ll soon be our prisoner, and it will be your job to make him see the light.”
First Sister slumped against the back of the chair. “You’ll never catch him!” she said in a high-pitched voice. “Make no mistake about that! His Jeep can outrun a horse any day!”
“Well, let’s hope so,” Commissar Jiang said as he dropped his angled arm and brought his legs together. He took out a cigarette and offered it to Laidi, who shrank away from it. He brought it even closer. Laidi looked up at the mysterious smile on Commissar Jiang’s face and reached out with a trembling hand, taking the cigarette in two nicotine-stained fingers. Commissar Jiang raised his own lit cigarette to his mouth and blew the ashes off the tip, turning it bright red. He then held the lit end out for Laidi. She looked into his face again. He was still smiling. Laidi seemed flustered as she put the cigarette to her lips and touched the tip to the lit end of Jiang’s cigarette. We heard what sounded like her lips smacking. Mother was staring woodenly at the wall, Sixth Sister and young master Sima were half asleep, Sha Zaohua wasn’t making a sound. A cloud of smoke rose in front of First Sister’s face. She raised her head and leaned back, her chest sagging. The fingers holding her cigarette were wet, like loaches just scooped out of the water. The fiery tip of her cigarette burned its way quickly toward her mouth. Her hair was a mess, deep lines spoked out from the corners of her mouth, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Slowly the smile on Commissar Jiang’s face disappeared, like water on a piece of hot metal, shrinking in on itself, until it was a bright dot the size of a needlepoint, before disappearing with a brief sizzle. The smile on Commissar Jiang’s face retreated up toward his nose and vanished with a brief snap. He flipped away his cigarette, which had nearly burned down all the way to his fingers, ground it out with the tip of his shoe, and strode out of the room.
We heard him bellow in the adjoining room, “We have to catch Sha Yueliang. If he finds his way into a rathole, we must go in and dig him out.” Then we heard the sound of a telephone receiver being slammed down.
With pity in her eyes, Mother looked over at First Sister, who sprawled in the chair looking as if all the bones in her body had been removed. She walked over, took her daughter’s nicotine-stained hand, and examined it; she shook her head. First Sister slid down to her knees on the floor and wrapped her arms around Mother’s legs. When she looked up, her lips were twitching like a suckling infant. A strange noise emerged from between those lips. At first I thought she was laughing, but I quickly realized she was crying. She wiped her tears and snot on Mother’s legs. “Mother,” she said, “if you want to know the truth, not a day went by that I didn’t think of you and my sisters and my brother …”
“Do you regret what you did?” Mother asked her.
First Sister did not react right away. Then she shook her head.
“That’s good,” Mother said. “The Lord points out the way for you, and regret only makes Him unhappy.”
Mother handed Zaohua to First Sister. “Take a look at her.”
First Sister stroked Sha Zaohua’s dark little face. “Mother,” she said, “if they execute me, you’ll have to raise her for me.”
“Even if they don’t execute you,” Mother said, “I’m still the one who should raise her.”
First Sister handed the girl back to Mother, who said, “You hold her for a while. I need to feed Jintong.”
Mother walked over to the chair and lifted up her blouse. She bent over at the waist, while I kneeled on the chair and began sucking. “In fairness, that Sha fellow is no coward, and I’m obliged to accept him as my son-in-law, if for no other reason than the fact that he hung all those rabbits from the tree. But he’ll never amount to a whole lot. How do I know that? The fact that he hung all those rabbits from the tree. The two of you together are no match for that Jiang fellow. With Jiang, it’s a needle hidden in downy cotton. He’s got teeth in that belly of his.”
In the darkness just before daybreak, a flock of exhausted magpies that had served as a bridge across the Milky Way flew down and perched on our roof ridge, where they chirped listlessly and woke me up. I saw Mother sitting in a chair holding Sha Zaohua, while I was sitting on Laidi’s ice-cold knees, her long arms wrapped tightly around my waist. Sixth Sister and the Sima heir were sleeping head to head, just as before. Eighth Sister was resting against Mother’s leg. There was no light in Mother’s eyes, and the corners of her mouth drooped from exhaustion.
Commissar Jiang walked in, took one look at us, and said, “Mrs. Sha, would you like to go see Commander Sha?”
First Sister pushed me off and jumped to her feet. “You’re lying!” she cried hoarsely.
Commissar Jiang crinkled his brow. “Lying?” he said. “Why would I lie?” He walked up to the table, bent over, and blew out the lamp. Red rays of sunlight immediately striped in through the open window. With a courteous — but maybe it wasn’t meant to be courteous — wave of his hand, he said, “After you, Mrs. Sha. As I told you before, we don’t want to block every single avenue. If he admits the error of his ways and sets back out on the right path, we will welcome him as vice commander of the demolition battalion.”
First Sister walked stiffly to the door, but turned back to look at Mother before going outside. “You may come, too, aunty,” Commissar Jiang said. “And your other children as well.”
We passed under all the many gates of the Sima manor and through several identical courtyards. In the fifth courtyard, we saw a dozen or more wounded soldiers lying on the ground. The female soldier, Miss Tang, was bandaging the leg of one of the wounded men, assisted by my fifth sister, Pandi. She was so focused on the task before her, she didn’t even see us. Mother whispered to First Sister, “That’s your fifth sister.” First Sister glanced over at her. “We paid a stiff price,” Commissar Jiang said. A large wooden gate had been placed on the ground in the sixth courtyard to serve as a makeshift bier for several corpses, their faces covered with white cloth. “Our Commander Lu heroically gave up his life. That has been an incalculable loss.” He bent down and removed the cloth from a blood-spattered, whiskered face. “The men begged us to let them skin Commander Sha alive, but that goes against our policy. Mrs. Sha, our good faith is enough to move even the ghosts and spirits, wouldn’t you say?” At the seventh courtyard, he led us around a screen wall, and we found ourselves standing on the high steps of the Felicity Manor main gate.
Soldiers of the demolition battalion were running back and forth on the street, their faces covere
d with dust. Several of them were leading a dozen or more horses, from east to west, while several others were supervising several dozen civilians who were pulling a Jeep by rope, from west to east. The two groups halted when they met in front of the gate, and two men who looked like junior officers came running up. They stopped, saluted, and reported to Commissar Jiang, at a pitch that sounded like an argument. One reported that they’d captured thirteen warhorses; the other reported that they’d captured an American Jeep. Unfortunately, the radiator was blown, so it had to be towed over. Commissar Jiang complimented them on a job well done. As their commander’s praise washed over them, they stood there, chests out, heads up, lights flashing in their eyes.
Commissar Jiang then led us over to the church, the gate of which was guarded by sixteen armed sentries. Jiang raised his hand, and the sentries slapped the butts of their rifles, clicked their heels, and snapped off a rifle salute. There we were, a bunch of women and children, suddenly transformed into generals on a military inspection.
At least sixty, maybe more, prisoners in olive drab uniforms were crowded into the southeast corner of the main hall. White mushrooms sprouted on the ceiling above, which was crumbling and mildewed from rain that had leaked through. A squad of four soldiers with assault rifles guarded the prisoners. They were holding magazines of ammunition in their left hands, while four of the fingers of their right hands were wrapped around rifle stocks that were as smooth and glossy as a maiden’s thigh; their fifth finger was on the curved trigger. They stood with their backs to us. On the floor behind them was a pile of leather belts, looking like a nest of snakes. The only way the prisoners could walk was by holding up their trousers.
The corners of Commissar Jiang’s mouth turned up in a barely detectable smile. He coughed lightly, maybe to announce his presence, I don’t know. Lazily, the prisoners raised their heads and looked at us. In an instant, their eyes flashed — once for some, twice for others, five, six, or seven times, nine at the most, for yet others. Those will-o’-the-wisp flickers of recognition must have been intended for Shangguan Laidi, if, as Commissar Jiang asserted, she was Commander Sha’s right arm. Whatever complex emotions were running through Laidi’s heart turned her eyes red and her face ashen; her head slumped onto her chest.
The prisoners reminded me of the black donkeys belonging to the musket band. When they were corralled in the church yard, they too huddled together in a corner — twenty-eight individual donkeys becoming fourteen pairs: you nibble my rectum while I gently bite you in the flank. Mutual concern, mutual protection, mutual aid. Where had this intimate group of donkeys met its end? Who was it that wiped them out? At Ma’er Mountain by Sima Ku’s guerrilla forces? Or was it at Biceps Mountain by Japanese secret police? Mother was brutalized on that sacred day when I was baptized. They were all members of the musket band, my mortal enemies. Now you should be punished by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Commissar Jiang cleared his throat. “Men of the Sha Brigade,” he said. “Are you hungry?”
Again the prisoners raised their heads. Some obviously wanted to reply, but didn’t dare to. Others had no desire to reply.
Commissar Jiang’s bodyguard said, “What’s wrong, little uncles, lost your voices? Our political commissar asked you a question.”
“Be civil to them!” Commissar Jiang rebuked his bodyguard, who blushed and lowered his head. “Brothers,” he continued, “I know you’re hungry and thirsty, and any of you with stomach problems are probably suffering right now, seeing spots in front of your eyes and breaking out in a cold sweat. Try to hold on just a little longer. Food is on its way. We don’t have a lot of the things we need here, so the food isn’t very good. We’ve prepared a pot of mung bean soup to take care of your thirst and cool you down. At noon there’ll be white flour steamed buns and fried horsemeat with chives.”
Happiness was written on the prisoners’ faces, and some of the men worked up the courage to talk quietly among themselves.
“There are lots of dead horses,” Commissar Jiang said, “all of them fine animals. What a shame you had to stumble into our minefield. When you’re eating horsemeat in a little while, who knows, you may be eating your own mounts, even though, as people say, ‘mules and horses may be as fine as gentlemen, but they’re still only mules and horses.’ So go ahead, eat as much as you can, since man is at the top of the food chain.”
He was still talking about horses when a pair of elderly soldiers carried in a large cauldron, grunting from the effort. Two younger soldiers staggered along behind, each carrying a stack of bowls from their navel all the way up under their chins. “Here’s the soup! Soup!” the old soldiers shouted, as if someone were blocking their way. The young soldiers strained to see over their stacked bowls to find a place to put them down. The two old soldiers squatted down and put the cauldron on the floor, nearly sitting down in the process. The young soldiers kept their upper bodies straight as they crouched down, placed the stacks of bowls on the floor, and pulled their hands out from under them. The stacks rocked back and forth. Freed of their burden, the men stood up and mopped their sweaty brows.
Commissar Jiang picked up a large wooden ladle and stirred the soup. “Did you add brown sugar?” he asked the old soldiers. “Reporting, sir, we couldn’t find brown sugar, so we went out and got a jar of granulated sugar. We took it from the Cao house. Old lady Cao didn’t want to part with it, and held on to it for dear life …”
“That’s enough. Dish it out to the men here!” Commisar Jiang said as he tossed down the ladle. Then, suddenly seeming to recall our presence, he turned and asked invitingly, “Would you each like a bowl?”
With a smirk, Laidi said, “The commissar did not invite us here to drink mung bean soup, did he?”
“Why shouldn’t we?” Mother said. “Old Zhang, each of the girls and I will have a bowl.”
“Mother,” Laidi said, “what if it’s poisoned?”
Commissar Jiang had a big laugh over that. “Mrs. Sha, you have quite an imagination.” He picked up the ladle, scooped out some of the soup, held it high, and let it drip back into the vat to show off the appearance and the aroma. Then he threw down the ladle again. “We put a packet of arsenic and two packets of rat poison into this soup. One drink and your stomach will burst within five paces, you’ll crumple to the ground in six, and blood will spurt from all the holes in your body. Now, anyone dare to drink it?”
Mother stepped up, picked up a bowl and dusted it with her sleeve, then reached for the ladle, with which she filled the bowl with soup and handed it to First Sister, who refused it. So Mother said, “Then this bowl is mine.” After blowing on the liquid, she took a couple of sips. After a couple more tentative sips, she filled three more bowls, which she handed to Sixth Sister, Eighth Sister, and the young Sima. “Our turn,” shouted some of the prisoners. “Give us some. We’ll drink three bowls of the stuff, poisoned or not.”
With the two old soldiers manning the ladles, the two younger ones passed out the bowls. The armed guards moved off to the sides and faced us at an angle; we could see their eyes, which were fixed on the prisoners, now on their feet and lining up, holding up their pants with one hand and ready to take bowls of mung bean soup with the other. Once they had the bowls in hand, they looked down cautiously, fearful that the hot liquid might burn their fingers. One by one, they returned slowly to the rear of the hall, where they hunkered down, freeing up both hands to hold the soup, which they blew on to cool before starting to eat. A puff of air, followed by noisy sips, the practiced way to eat without burning the inside of your mouth. Young Sima, lacking that experience, slurped up a mouthful, which he could neither spit out nor swallow, and wound up with a burned mouth. While he was taking his bowl of soup, one of the prisoners said softly, “Second Uncle …” The old soldier with the ladle looked up and stared into the young face before him. “Don’t you recognize me, Second Uncle? It’s me, Little Chang …” The old soldier reached out and whacked the back of Little Cha
ng’s hand with the ladle. “Who are you calling Second Uncle?” he scolded. “You’ve got the wrong man. I’ve got no nephew who’s willing to be a turncoat and wear a green uniform!” With a cry of Aiya, Little Chang dropped his bowl onto his foot, giving him a nasty burn. With another Aiya, he let go of his pants to reach down and rub his foot; his pants slipped to his knees, revealing a dirty, tattered pair of underpants. A third Aiya escaped as he reached down to pull up his trousers and stand up straight; tears filled his eyes.
“Old Zhang, you have your orders!” Commissar Jiang said angrily. “Who gave you the authority to strike a prisoner? Report to the sergeant-at-arms. Three days in the stockade!”
“But,” Old Zhang protested, “he called me Second Uncle …”
“I’m betting you are his second uncle,” Commissar Jiang said. “Why try to hide it? If he does what he’s told, he can become a member of our demolition battalion. How’s that burn, youngster? We’ll have a medic put some salve on it in a little while. Meanwhile, he spilled his soup, so give him another bowl, and add a few extra beans.”
The unfortunate young nephew hobbled back to the rear of the hall with his thicker-than-average soup, as the prisoners behind him in line stepped up to get their bowls.
Now all the prisoners were drinking their soup, filling the church with loud slurps. For the moment, the old and young soldiers had nothing to do; one of the young ones was standing there licking his lips, the other had his eyes fixed on me. One of the older ones was scraping the bottom of the vat with his ladle, the other had taken out a tobacco pouch and pipe and was preparing to take a smoke break. Mother put her bowl up to my lips, but I pushed it away, disgusted by its coarseness. My mouth was adapted to one thing and one thing only: her nipples.
First Sister snorted disdainfully. Commissar Jiang was looking at her, and she made sure she rewarded him with an expression of contempt. “I guess I should have a bowl of mung bean soup too,” she said.