“A six-month debt is quickly repaid,” Sima said. “But Brother Lu, you’ve demanded too much interest.”
“I am deeply pained over the tragic loss of your wife. But that is the nature of revolutions. When cutting out a tumor, some good cells must be sacrificed. But that cannot stop us from cutting out the tumor. I hope this is something you can understand.”
“Don’t waste your spittle,” Sima Ku said. “You may kill me now!”
“Nothing so simple is planned for you.”
“Then you’ll forgive me if I take matters into my own hands.”
He reached in and pulled out a silver-plated pistol, cocked the hammer, and turned to Mother. “I’m doing this to avenge your loss,” he said as he put the pistol to his head.
Lu Liren roared with laughter. “So you’re a coward, after all! Go ahead, kill yourself, you pathetic worm!”
Sima Ku’s hand began to shake.
“Daddy!” It was Sima Liang.
Sima Ku turned to look at his son. Slowly his hand dropped to his side. He let out a self-mocking laugh and handed the pistol to Lu Liren. “Here, you take this.”
Lu Liren took the pistol and hefted it in his hand. “This is a woman’s toy,” he said as he flipped it disdainfully to one of the men behind him, and then stomped his water-soaked, muddy feet on the ground. “Actually, once you handed over the weapon, your fate was no longer in my hands. My superiors will choose where you wind up — in Heaven or in Hell.”
With a shake of his head, Sima Ku said, “I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong, Commander Lu. There is no seat reserved for me in either Heaven or Hell. My seat exists between those two places, and when it’s all over and done with, you will be in the same boat as me.”
Lu Liren turned to the men beside him. “Take them away.”
Guards moved up, nudged Sima Ku and Babbitt with their rifles, and said, “Get moving!”
“Let’s go,” Sima Ku said to Babbitt. “They can kill me a hundred times, but they won’t touch a hair on your head.”
Still holding Sixth Sister up, Babbitt walked up to Sima Ku.
“Mrs. Babbitt can stay behind,” Lu Liren said.
“Commander Lu,” Sixth Sister said, “I ask you to spare the two of us as a reward for helping Mother raise Lu Shengli.”
Pushing up his glasses, with their broken rim, he said to Mother, “You talk some sense into her.”
Mother shook her head and sat down on her haunches. “Give me a hand, children,” she said to Sima Liang and me.
So Sima Liang and I hoisted Zhaodi’s body up on Mother’s back.
With her daughter on her back, Mother headed down the muddy road home, barefoot, with Sima Liang and me beside her, each holding up one of Zhaodi’s stiffening legs to ease Mother’s burden. The deep footprints she made in the muddy road with her crippled, once-bound feet were still discernible months later.
6
The Flood Dragon River had reached flood stage; by looking out the window from my bed, I could see murky yellow water roaring along at the crest of the dike. A detachment of soldiers stood atop the dike gazing at the river as they engaged in a loud discussion.
Out in the yard Mother was making flatcakes on a griddle, while Zaohua kept the fire going. Because the firewood was still wet, the flames burned dark yellow and filled the air with dense black smoke. The sun’s rays were muted.
Sima Liang came inside, bringing with him the acrid smell of scholar tree. “They’re planning to take my dad plus Sixth Aunt and her husband back to military headquarters,” he said in a low voice. “Third Aunt’s husband and the others are making a raft to sail downriver.”
“Liang,” Mother called out from outside. “Go down to the river with your uncle and aunt and keep the others there. Tell them I want to see them off.”
The river flowed fast and dirty, carrying grain stalks, yam vines, dead animals, even — out in the deepest part — entire uprooted trees. The Flood Dragon River Bridge, three pylons of which Sima Ku had burned down, had disappeared under the raging water, its existence signaled only by swirling eddies and the loud crashing of waves. Scrub brush on both sides of the river had also disappeared, though every once in a while a branch poked through the surface, green leaves still attached. Gray-blue gulls skimmed the tips of waves, from time to time coming up with a small fish. The opposite bank looked like a black rope that kept popping in and out of view, dancing atop sprays of glistening water. No more than a few inches kept the river from swamping the dikes; in some spots, yellow tongues of water lapped seductively at the crests, formed eddies, and slithered over the outer edges.
When we reached the riverbank, Speechless Sun was holding his impressive organ in his hand and pissing into the water, the whiskey-colored liquid making bell-like sounds when it hit the surface. He smiled when he saw us, took out a whistle he’d fashioned from a cartridge, and entertained us with birdcalls: the throaty call of the thrush, the shallow moan of the oriole, and the sad wail of the lark. It was enchanting; even his warty face softened. After running through his repertoire, he flicked the saliva out of his whistle and, with a guttural gr-ao, thrust it toward me, obviously intending it as a gift. But I backed up fearfully and just looked at him. Speechless Sun, you demon, I’ll never forget the look on your face when you were cutting down people with your sword! Again he reached out toward me, followed by another gr-ao, as a look of agitation spread across his face. I backed up. He came toward me. Sima Liang, who was standing behind me, said in softly, “Don’t take it, Little Uncle. ‘The whistling mute, confronted by a brute.’ He uses that thing to call ghosts in the cemetery.” Gr-ao! Beginning to get angry, Speechless Sun forced the brass object into my hand, before turning and walking over to a group of men who were making wooden rafts, ignoring us altogether. Sima Liang dug the whistle out of my hand and examined it carefully in the sunlight, as if expecting to have some secret revealed. “Little Uncle,” he said, “I was born under the sign of the cat, not one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, so no ghost is a match for me. I’ll hold on to this for you.” He put the whistle into one of the many hidden pockets in his knee-length, liberally patched pants. A great many strange and interesting objects filled those pockets: a stone that changed color in the moonlight, a little saw used for cutting roof tiles, apricot pits in a variety of shapes, even a pair of sparrow talons and the skulls of two frogs. He also carried baby teeth — his, Eighth Sister’s, and mine — which Mother had thrown into the yard behind the house; he’d retrieved every one of them, which was no mean feat, considering all the dog shit hidden in the tall weeds. But he said, “If you really want to find something, it’ll jump right out of its hiding place.” Now to the hidden treasures in his pants was added a demonic little whistle.
Like a column of ants, more than a dozen 16th Regiment soldiers were carrying pine logs down one of the lanes to the riverbank.
Crashl Bangi Sima Ting’s watchtower was under siege. Speechless Sun led the assault, directing his men to take down the posts and fasten them together with thick wire. Zunlong the Elder, the village’s handiest carpenter, was their technical supervisor. The mute was screaming at him like a wrathful gorilla, spittle flying everywhere. Zunlong stood at attention, arms at his sides, a clamp in one hand and a hatchet in the other. His scarred knees were pressed together; his calves, with their protruding veins, were straight and rigid; he was wearing wooden clogs.
At that moment, a guard with a rifle slung over his back came riding down the lane on a bicycle. After parking his bike, he scrambled up the dike; halfway there, one of his feet sank into a rat hole, and when he pulled it out, murky water seeped to the surface. “Look,” Sima Liang said, “the dike’s about to go.” The soldier echoed his concern. “Look out!” he shouted. “There’s a hole here.” Panic-stricken soldiers stopped what they were doing and stared fearfully at the watery hole. A rare look of terror even appeared on the mute’s face as he gazed out at the raging river, where the water flowed higher than the talle
st building in the village. Taking out his sword and tossing it to the top of the dike, he stripped off his shirt and pants, until he was standing there dressed only in a pair of shorts that looked as if they were made of sheet metal. He turned to his men and grunted. Like a flock of startled woodcocks, they just gaped at him. Finally, one bushy-browed soldier shouted, “What do you want us to do? Jump into the river?” The mute ran up and grabbed him by the collar, pulling so hard that several black plastic buttons snapped off. In his excitement, the mute spat out a word — Strip! — everyone heard it.
Zunlong looked at the hole and at the eddies in the river. “You there, soldiers,” he said, “it’s a gopher hole, which means it widens out below. Your commander wants you to strip so you can go down and plug the holes. Go on, men, strip. If you don’t do it now, it’ll be too late.”
Zunlong took off his patched jacket and threw it at the mute’s feet. Taking their cue from him, the soldiers began to strip. One youngster merely took off his jacket, leaving his pants on. The mute, getting angrier by the minute, repeated his command: “Strip! Strip! Strip!” When cornered, dogs jump over walls, cats climb trees, rabbits bite, and mutes speak. Over and over he bellowed. “Commander,” the young soldier stammered, “I’m not wearing undershorts!” The mute picked up his sword and laid the back of the blade across the soldier’s neck, thumping it twice. The poor soldier paled and blubbered, “I’ll strip, Grandpa Mute, how’s that?” He bent down, untied his leggings, and took off his pants, revealing his lily-white backside and a nearly hairless prick, which he quickly covered with his hands. The mute turned to have the guard strip also, but the man ran down the dike, jumped on his bicycle, rocked back and forth a time or two, and sped away, shouting as he went, “The dike’s about to go — the dike’s about to go!”
While Zunlong knocked down a bean trellis at the foot of the dike and made a large ball out of the vines and pieces of lath, the mute put his clothes in a pile and tied them up with his leggings. Several soldiers helped him roll the bundle up to the top of the dike, where the mute picked it up and was about to jump into the river, when Zunlong pointed to a whirlpool. So he went over to his toolbox, took out a flat green bottle, and removed the cork. The smell of alcohol rose into the air. The mute took the bottle, tipped his head back, and poured the contents down his throat. With a thumbs-up, he waved at Zunlong and shouted, “Strip!” which everyone knew meant “good.” Bundle in hand, he dove into the river, whose waters had already breached the dike. By then the gopher hole was the size of a horse’s neck, releasing gushing water that snaked its way down the lane and turned into a fullblown stream of murky water that quickly reached our door. Our houses looked like miniature sand castles alongside the raging river. The mute disappeared in the river, the spot marked by bubbles and clumps of grass. Gulls skimmed the surface, their beady black eyes fixed with nervous anticipation on the spot where the mute had gone into the water. I could make out their bright red beaks and the black talons tucked under their bellies. With growing anxiety, we kept our eyes glued to the water as a glistening dark watermelon rolled once and was swallowed up. It resurfaced a few feet downriver. Then a scrawny black frog struggled to swim toward us from the middle of the muddy river, fighting the current. When it reached the relatively calm water near the bank, I could see the little wakes made by its scissoring legs. The soldiers, nervous looks frozen on their taut faces, stretched their necks to see what was happening. They looked like a line of condemned men awaiting the executioner’s sword. The one who’d been forced to strip naked kept the family jewels hidden behind his hands as he too craned his neck to look. Zunlong, on the other hand, was staring at the hole in the dike. Seeing that no one was paying attention, Sima Liang picked up the mute’s sword, a weapon that killed men as easily as slicing a melon, and furtively ran his thumb along the blade to test its sharpness.
“Okay!” Zunlong shouted. “The hole’s been plugged!”
The savage gush of water from the hole was now a mere trickle. Like a huge black fish, the mute’s head crashed through the surface, sending the gulls circling above the spot soaring skyward in fright. As he wiped the water from his face with one of his large hands, he spat out a muddy geyser. Zunlong ordered the soldiers to toss the ball of vines out into the river. The mute grabbed it with both hands, pressing it down into the water so he could climb on top, legs and all. He too dipped beneath the surface, but only for a moment; he sucked in a mouthful of air the moment his head reappeared. Zunlong reached out with a long branch to pull him in, but the mute waved him off and dipped back beneath the surface.
In the village the crash of a gong was followed by a bugled charge. Scores of armed soldiers rushed the riverbank from all the neighboring lanes. Lu Liren and his guards emerged from the mouth of our lane. The minute he reached the dike, he shouted, “Where’s the danger?”
The mute’s head popped up, and then quickly disappeared, a sign that he was exhausted. So Zunlong reached out again with his branch and pulled the mute to the river’s edge, where soldiers dragged him up onto dry land. Rubber-legged, he sat on the bank.
“Commander,” Zunlong said to Lu Liren, “if not for this man, the villagers would probably be feeding the turtles by now.”
Lu walked up to the mute and gave him a thumbs-up. His skin a mass of goose bumps and his face covered with mud, the mute just smiled.
Lu Liren’s men turned to shoring up the dike. Meanwhile, work on the rafts continued, since the prisoners had to be ferried across the river by noon, where they were to be met by escorts from headquarters. The soldiers who had shed their uniforms were relieved. The more praise that was heaped upon them, the more energetic they became, and they asked to stay to complete their mission, with or without uniforms. So Lu Liren had someone run back to camp to fetch a pair of pants for the little bare-assed soldier. He smiled at the youngster and said, “Why be embarrassed just because you’ve got a hairless little pecker?” While he was giving orders, Lu turned to me and asked, “How’s your mother? Shengli must be quite a handful.” Sima Liang nudged me, but I didn’t know what he wanted. So he spoke up: “Granny wants to come to see my father off and would like you to wait for her.”
Meanwhile, Zunlong had thrown himself into his work, and within half an hour had built a raft several meters long. Since they had no oars, he recommended that they use wooden spades. Lu Liren gave the order. Then he replied to Sima Liang, “Go tell your granny that I’ve granted her request.” He looked at his watch. “You two can leave now.” But we didn’t, because when we looked toward the house, we saw Mother walk out the door with a bamboo basket covered by a piece of white cloth over one arm and carrying a red earthenware teapot in her other hand. Zaohua walked out after her, a bunch of green scallions in her arms. Behind her came Sima Ku’s twin daughters, Sima Feng and Sima Huang; they were followed by the twin sons of the mute and Third Sister, Big Mute and Little Mute. Then came Lu Shengli, who had just learned to walk. Bringing up the rear was Shangguan Laidi, her face heavily powdered. The procession moved slowly. The twin girls kept looking at the bean vines and the morning glories growing among them, hoping to see dragonflies, butterflies, or cicada shells. The twin boys kept looking at trees lining the lane — scholar trees, willow trees, and mulberry trees, with their light yellow bark; they were looking for delectable snails. Lu Shengli kept her eyes peeled for puddles, and whenever she spotted one, she stomped down in the water and filled the lane with gales of innocent laughter. Laidi was walking like a proper young lady, but I was so far away I could see only her powdered face, not her features.
Lu Liren took a pair of binoculars from the neck of one of his guards and looked across the river. A soldier beside him asked with a sense of urgency, “Are they here?”
“No,” he said without looking away. “Not a trace of them. All I see is a crow pecking at a pile of horse dung.”
“Could something have happened to them?” the guard asked anxiously.
“I don’t think so. They’
re all marksmen, and no one would dare try to stop them.”
Suddenly, a group of dark-skinned men stood on the opposite dike; the sun’s shifting reflection on the surface created the illusion that they were standing on the water, not the dike. “There they are,” Lu Liren said. “Have the signalmen let them know we’re here.”
A young soldier stepped up, raised a short, stubby, strange-looking pistol, and fired it into the air. A yellow ball arced into the sky, froze there for a moment, and then fell in a sweeping curve, leaving a trail of white smoke and a sizzling sound before falling into the river. As it fell, some gulls were tempted to go after it, but a closer look sent them fleeing with shrill cries.
“Give another signal,” Lu Liren said, when there was no response.
This time the soldier took out a red banner, tied it to the end of the branch Zunlong had discarded, and waved it in the air; the men on the other bank roared their approval.
“Good,” Lu Liren said as he draped the binoculars around his neck. He turned to the young officer who had spoken with him a moment before. “Staff Officer Qian, run back and tell Chief of Staff Du to bring the prisoners, on the double.” Staff Officer Du turned and ran down the dike.
Lu Liren jumped onto the raft and stomped on it to see how sturdy it was. “It won’t break up out on the river, will it?” he asked Zunlong.
“Don’t you worry, sir. Back in the autumn of 1921, the villagers ferried Senator Zhao across the river. I made the raft they used.”
“These are important prisoners,” Lu Liren said. “There can be no mistakes.”
“Don’t you worry, sir. If there are, you can cut off nine of my ten fingers.”
“What good would that do? If the worst happened, even taking nine of my fingers would serve no purpose.”
Mother led her procession up the dike, where she was met by Lu Liren. “Aunt,” he said politely, “wait here for the time being. They’re being brought over now.” He bent down to put his face up close to Lu Shengli. Frightened, she started to cry, embarrassing Lu, who straightened his eyeglasses and said, “She doesn’t even know her own daddy.” “Fifth Son-in-law,” Mother said with a sigh. “All this fighting, back and forth, when’s it going to end?” Lu had an answer ready. “Don’t worry, in two or, at the most, three years, you’ll have the peaceful life you’re looking for.” Mother said, “I’m just a woman, and I ought to keep my thoughts to myself, but can’t you find it in you to let them go? After all, you and they are part of the same family.” “Dear Mother-in-law,” Lu said with a smile, “that’s not for me to decide. But how did you wind up with so many troublesome sons-in-law?” He laughed, a mirthful sound that lightened the mood on the dike. “Can’t you ask your superiors to grant clemency?” “Please, Mother-in-law, don’t trouble yourself over things like this.”