“Of course you should,” Commissar Jiang said. “Just look at your face. It reminds me of a dry eggplant. Old Zhang, a bowl of soup for Mrs. Sha, and hurry. Make it thick.”
“I want it thin,” First Sister said.
“Then make it thin,” Commissar Jiang said.
Holding the bowl up to her mouth, First Sister took a sip. “You did add sugar,” she said. “Commissar Jiang, why don’t you have a bowl. Your throat must be dry after all that talk.”
Commissar Jiang reached up and pinched his throat. “Indeed it is. Fill up a bowl for me, Old Zhang. Thin.”
With the bowl in his hands, Commissar Jiang discussed the qualities of mung beans with First Sister. He told her that in his hometown there was a sandy variety that softened as soon as the water boiled, whereas the local beans didn’t even begin to soften for a couple of hours. Once they’d exhausted the subject of mung beans, they moved on to soybeans. You’d have thought they were bean experts; after they’d discussed nearly all varieties of beans, and Commissar Jiang had started in on peanuts, First Sister threw her bowl to the floor and spat out savagely, “What sort of trap are you setting, Jiang?”
“Mrs. Sha,” he said, “don’t overreact. Let’s go, what do you say? We’ve kept Commander Sha waiting long enough.”
“Where is he?” First Sister asked derisively.
“A place you remember only too well, of course,” Jiang replied.
There were more sentries at our gate than at the church.
One group was stationed at the door to the east wing, under the command of the mute, Speechless Sun. He was sitting on a log beside the wall, playing with his sword. The Bird Fairy was perched in the crotch of the peach tree, holding a cucumber and nibbling it with her front teeth.
“Go on in,” Commissar Jiang said to First Sister. “Try to talk some sense into him. We’re hoping he’ll abandon the dark and walk into the light.”
The moment First Sister entered the east wing, she let out a shriek.
We ran in after her. Sha Yueliang was hanging from the rafters. He was wearing a green wool uniform and a pair of shiny, knee-length leather boots. I remembered him as being of average height; but hanging there, he struck me as being exceptionally tall.
9
I climbed down off the kang and threw myself into Mother’s lap before my eyes were even fully opened. Savagely, I pulled up her blouse, grabbed the mound of her breast with both hands, and took her nipple between my lips. Something spicy filled my mouth, and tears filled my eyes. I spat out the nipple and looked up, puzzled and a bit put out. Mother patted me on the head and smiled apologetically. “Jintong,” she said, “you’re seven years old, almost a grown man. It’s time to stop the breast-feeding.” Before the echo of her words had died out, I heard a peal of crisp, bell-like laughter from Eighth Sister, Shangguan Yunii.
A curtain of darkness lowered before my eyes. I looked heavenward just before I fell to the floor. Suddenly forlorn, I noticed that Mother’s breasts, their nipples covered with a peppery coating, looked like a pair of red-eyed doves arching into the sky. In order to wean me, Mother had tried smearing her nipples with the juice of raw ginger, liquified garlic, smelly fish oil, even a bit of rancid chicken droppings. This time she’d used pepper oil. Each time she’d tried to wean me in the past, she’d relented when I fell to the floor as if struck dead. This time I lay on the floor, waiting for her to go in and wash her nipples, as she always had in the past. Scenes from the scary dream I’d had during the night unfolded before my eyes: Mother had sliced off one of her breasts and tossed it to the floor. “Go ahead, suck it!” she’d said. “Suck it!” A black cat had run up, snatched it in its mouth, and run off with it.
Mother picked me up off the floor and sat me down hard next to the dining table. She wore a grave expression. “Say what you like, but this time I’m going to wean you!” she said firmly. “Do you plan to suck until you reduce me to a piece of dry kindling, is that it, Jintong?”
The young Sima, Sha Zaohua, and my eighth sister, Yunii, were sitting around the table eating noodles. They turned toward me with looks of scorn. Shangguan Lü was sitting on a pile of cinders beside the stove, sneering at me. Her windblown skin was like coarse, flaky toilet paper. Young Sima lifted a long, squirmy noodle out of the bowl with his chopsticks and held it up in the air, trying to dazzle me. Then, like a worm, the noodle squirmed into his mouth — disgusting!
Mother put a bowl of steaming noodles down on the table and handed me a pair of chopsticks. “Here, eat,” she said. “Try some noodles your sixth sister made.”
Sixth Sister, who was feeding Shangguan Lü beside the stove, turned and gave me a hostile look. “Still breast-feeding,” she said, “at your age. You’re hopeless!”
I flung the bowl of noodles at her.
She jumped up, covered with squirmy noodles. “Mother,” she growled, “see how you’ve spoiled him!” Mother smacked the back of my head.
I ran over and threw myself against Sixth Sister, clawing at her breasts. I could hear them cry out in protest, like baby chicks being bitten by rats. She doubled over in pain, but I held on for dear life. Her long, thin face turned yellow. “Mother,” she cried out, “look at him, Mother!”
Mother attacked my head. “You swine!” she cursed. “You dirty little swine!”
I lost consciousness.
When I came to, I had a splitting headache. Young Sima was still playing with his noodles, unconcerned about what was going on around him. Sha Zaohua looked up from behind her bowl, noodles stuck to her face, and gazed timidly at me. But I couldn’t help feeling that there was respect in her eyes. Sixth Sister, her breasts hurting, sat in the doorway weeping. Shangguan Lü was staring malignantly at me. My mother, seemingly ready to burst from anger, was studying the mess of noodles on the floor. “You little bastard! You think these noodles come easy?” She scooped up a handful of the noodles — no, what she scooped up was a nest of squirmy worms — then pinched my nose shut, forcing me to open my mouth, and crammed the worms inside. “Eat those, every last one of them! You’ve sucked the marrow out of my bones, you little monster!” I threw it all up, broke free from her grasp, and ran out into the yard.
Shangguan Laidi was out there, still wearing the ill-fitting black coat she hadn’t taken off in four years, bent at the waist as she honed the edge of a knife on a whetting stone. She flashed me a friendly smile. But then her expression changed. “This time I’ll kill him for sure,” she said, grinding her teeth. “His time has come. I’ve got this knife sharper than the north wind, and cooler, and I’m going to make sure he understands that murderers pay with their lives.”
I was in no mood to pay her any attention, since everyone assumed she’d gone off her rocker. But I knew she was just faking madness, I just didn’t know why. That time in the west wing, where she was staying, she sat high up on top of the millstone, her legs, covered by the black robe, hanging straight down. She told me what it was like being part of Sha Yueliang’s marauding band, how she’d lived like royalty, and all the strange and wonderful things she’d seen. She’d owned a box that could sing and a glass that could bring distant objects right up under her nose. At the time I thought that was all crazy talk, but it wasn’t long before I saw one of those boxes that could sing. Shangguan Pandi had brought one home with her. During her stay with the demolition battalion, she’d lived a life of ease and comfort, and had gotten fat in the process, like a pregnant mare. She carefully placed the object, with its brass morning glory, on the kang and said proudly: “Come over here, all of you. This will open your eyes!” She removed the red cloth covering and revealed the box’s secret. First she cranked a handle round and round, and then she said, with a mysterious smile, “Listen, this is what a foreigner sounds like when he laughs.” The sound that came out of the box at that moment nearly frightened us out of our wits. The foreigner’s laughter sounded like the crying of ghosts in tales we’d heard. “Get that thing out of here!” Mother demanded. “Right
this minute! I don’t want any box of ghosts in this house!” “Mother,” Shangguan Pandi said, “that brain of yours is too old-fashioned. This is a gramophone, not a box of ghosts.” From out in the yard, Laidi said, “The needle’s worn out. It needs a new one.”
“Mrs. Sha,” Fifth Sister said sarcastically, “you needn’t show off around us. You’re a damned slut!” she added said hatefully. “They should have had you shot, and would have if not for me.”
“I could have killed him, and would have if you hadn’t stopped me!” First Sister said. “I want you all to look at her. Does she look like some young virgin to you? That Jiang fellow nibbled on those big breasts of hers until they looked like a pair of dried turnips.”
“Dogshit turncoat! Female turncoat!” Instinctively, Fifth Sister protected her sagging breasts with her arms, as she kept the curses coming: “Stinking wife of a dogshit turncoat!”
“Get out of here, both of you!” Mother said, spitting mad. “Go out and die somewhere, and don’t let me see you again!”
The episode instilled in me respect for Shangguan Laidi. She was relaxing in the donkey trough, which had been lined with straw, and said to me in a friendly voice, “You little idiot!” “I’m no idiot!” I defended myself. “But I think you are.” She abruptly lifted up her black coat, raised her legs high, and said in a muffled voice, “Look here!”
A ray of sunlight lit up her thighs, her belly, and her breasts, like a sow’s teats.
“Come here.” I saw a smile on her face at the far end of the trough. “Come here and suckle on me. Mother let my daughter suckle on her, so I’ll let you suckle on me, and that way no one owes anyone anything.”
I nervously walked up to the trough, where she was now arched like a leaping carp. She reached out and grabbed my shoulders and covered my head with the lower half of her black coat. My world turned dark. And in that darkness I began to grope, curious and tense, mysterious and enthralling. “Here, over here.” Her voice sounded far away. “Little idiot.” She stuffed one of her nipples into my mouth. “Start sucking, you little whelp. You’re not a true Shangguan. You’re a little hybrid bastard.” The bitter-tasting dirt on her nipple melted in my mouth. Her underarm sweat nearly smothered me. I felt I was suffocating, but she held my head in her hands and pushed her body up against mine, as if trying to cram every last bit of her large, hard breast into my mouth. When I reached the point where I could no longer stand it, I bit down on her nipple. Jumping to her feet, she sent me sliding down her body and out from under the coat, to lie huddled at her feet, waiting for the kick I knew was coming. Tears coursed down her dark, gaunt cheeks. Her breasts heaved beneath the black coat, and brought forth gorgeous feathers, until they looked like a pair of birds that had just mated.
Regretting what I’d done, I reached out to touch the back of her hand with my finger. She lifted her hand and rubbed it against my neck. “Good little brother,” she said softly, “don’t tell anybody what happened today.”
I nodded, and meant it.
“I’m going to share a secret with you,” she said. “My husband came to me in a dream and said he’s not dead. His soul has attached itself to the body of a blond, light-skinned man.”
My imagination ran wild over my secret encounter with Laidi as I walked down the lane, where a squad of five demolition soldiers had run out like madmen. A veil of ecstasy covered their faces. One of them, a fat man, shoved me. “Hey, little fellow, the Jap devils have surrendered! Run on home and tell your mother that Japan has surrendered. The War of Resistance is over!”
Out on the street I saw crowds of soldiers whooping and hollering and jumping around, a group of puzzled civilians among them. It was 1945; the Jap devils had surrendered, and I had been denied the breast. Laidi had given me hers, but she’d had no milk, and her nipple had been covered by a layer of cold, odorific grime; just thinking about that brought feelings of despair. My third brother-in-law, the mute, ran out from the northern entrance to the lane carrying the Bird Fairy. Mother had kicked him and the other soldiers in his unit out of our house after the death of Sha Yueliang. So he put them up in his own house, and the Bird Fairy had gone with him. But though they moved away, the Bird Fairy’s shameless cries often emerged late at night from the mute’s house and meandered all the way to our ears. Now he was carrying her toward us. She lay in his arms with her swollen belly, dressed in a white coat that looked to have been tailored from the same pattern as Laidi’s black coat; only the color was different. Seeing the Bird Fairy’s coat reminded me of Laidi’s coat, which in turn reminded me of Laidi’s breasts, and they reminded me of the Bird Fairy’s breasts. Among Shangguan women, the Bird Fairy’s breasts had to be considered top of the line. They were delicate, lovely, perky, with slightly upturned nipples as nimble as the mouth of a hedgehog. Does saying that the Bird Fairy’s breasts were top of the line mean that Laidi’s were not? I can only give a vague response. Since the moment I was conscious of what was going on around me, I’d discovered that the range of beauty in breasts is wide; while one should never lightly say that a particular pair is ugly, one can easily say that a pair of breasts is beautiful. Hedgehogs are beautiful sometimes; so are baby pigs.
The mute put the Bird Fairy down in front of me. “Ah-ao, ah-ao!” He waved his massive fist, which was the size of a horse hoof, under my nose, but in a friendly way. I understood him: his “Ah-ao, ah-ao!” grunts meant the same as “The Jap devils have surrendered!” He took off down the street like a bull.
The Bird Fairy cocked her head and looked at me. Her belly was terrifyingly big, like that of a gigantic spider. “What are you, a turtledove or a wild goose?” she chirped. Maybe she was asking me, and maybe she wasn’t. “My bird flew away. My bird, it flew away!” There was a look of panic on her face. I pointed to the street. She stuck her arms out straight, pawed at the ground with her bare feet, and, with a chirp, took off running toward the street. She was moving fast. How could such a huge belly not slow her down? If not for that belly, she probably could have taken wing. She ran into the crowd on the street like a powerful ostrich.
Fifth Sister came running home; she too was pregnant, and her bulging breasts had leaked into her gray uniform. In contrast to the Bird Fairy, she was a clumsy runner. The Bird Fairy flapped her arms when she ran; Fifth Sister supported her belly when she ran. Fifth Sister was gasping for breath, like a mare that’s pulled a wagon up a hill. Pandi had the fullest figure of all the Shangguan daughters, and she was also the tallest. Her breasts were fierce and intimidating; as if filled with gas, they went peng-peng when thumped. First Sister’s face was covered by a black veil; she was wearing her black coat. In the dark of night, she climbed into the Sima compound from a nearby ditch and followed the smell of sweat to a brightly lit room. The flagstones in the yard were slippery, covered by green moss. Her heart was in her throat and about to beat its way out through her mouth. The hand in which she carried the knife cramped up, and she had a fishy taste in her mouth. She peered through the crack in a latticed door, and what she saw nearly made her soul take flight and her heart stop: a large white candle, wax dripping down its sides, shone brightly and sent fleshy shadows dancing on the walls. Scattered on the stone floor were Shangguan Pandi and Commissar Jiang’s clothes; a coarse wool sock was lying alongside the apricot yellow toilet. Pandi, naked as the day she was born, was sprawled atop the dark, gaunt body of Jiang Liren. First Sister burst into the room. But she hesitated as she looked down at her sister’s raised buttocks and the indentation at the base of her backbone, glistening with sweat. Her enemy, the man she wanted to kill, was protected. Raising her knife, she screamed, “I’m going to kill you two, I’m going to kill you!” Pandi rolled over and off the bed, while Jiang Liren grabbed the blanket and rushed First Sister, knocking her to the ground. Ripping the veil off her face, he laughed. “I thought it might be you!”
Fifth Sister stood in the doorway shouting, “The Japanese have surrendered!”
She dragged me way back
out to the street. Her hand was sweaty — sour, salty sweat. I detected along with the smell of sour sweat the odor of tobacco. That smell came from her husband, Lu Liren. In order to commemorate the victory over the Sha Band, in which Commander Lu had heroically sacrificed his life, Jiang Liren had changed his name to Lu Liren. The smell of Lu Liren was scattered across the street via Fifth Sister’s hand.
Out on the street, the demolition battalion was celebrating noisily, many of the soldiers crying openly and banging into one another. One of them climbed to the top of the shaky bell tower, as the crowd down below swelled. People came with gongs, or with milking goats, even chunks of meat bouncing around on large lotus leaves. A woman with bells tied to her breasts really caught my attention. She was performing a strange dance that made her breasts jiggle, causing the bells to ring and ring and ring. The people kicked up a cloud of dust; they shouted themselves hoarse. The Bird Fairy, who was in the middle of the crowd, darted glances back and forth; the mute raised his fist and pounded a man beside him. Eventually, a group of soldiers went into the Sima compound and reemerged carrying Lu Liren over their heads. They tossed him into the air, as high as the tips of nearby trees, and when he came down, they caught him and tossed him back into the air… Hai-ya! Hai-ya! Hai-yal! Fifth Sister, holding her belly and crying, shouted, “Liren! Liren!” She tried to squeeze in among the soldiers, but was driven back.
The sun raced across the sky, seemingly frightened by the din below, and sat on the ground, resting against the trees on the sandy ridge. More relaxed now, it was bright red, blistery, and sweaty; it steamed and panted like an old man, as it observed the crowd on the street.
At first, one man fell in the dust. Then a whole string of them fell. Slowly, the dust settled back to earth and covered the men’s faces and hands and sweat-stained uniforms. A whole string of men lay stiffly in the dust under the red rays of the sun. As dusk fell, cool breezes blew over from the marshes and reed ponds; the crisp whistle of a train crossing the bridge was carried on the wind. People cocked their ears to listen. Or maybe I was the only one who did that. The War of Resistance had been won, but Shangguan Jintong had been cast off by his beloved breasts. I thought about death. I felt like jumping down a well, or into the river.