“Number Two is Number Two, and I’m me,” Sima Ting said to Mother in the lamplight. “Let’s be clear on that, Sister-in-law.”
“Then he’ll call you Elder Uncle. Jintong, this is your elder uncle, Sima Ting.”
Before I drifted off to sleep again, I watched Sima Ting take a shiny gold medal out of his pocket and hand it to Mother. “Sister-in-law,” he said in a muffled, bashful voice, “I’ve made amends for my crimes.”
After crawling out of the haystack, Sima Ting slipped out of the village in the dark of night. Half a month later, he was dragooned into a stretcher unit, where he was paired with a dark-faced young man. During one of the battles, he lost three fingers of his left hand in an explosion. But he did not let the pain stop him from carrying a squad leader who had lost a leg to the hospital on his back.
I listened to him prattle on and on, relating all his strange adventures, like a young man spinning yarns to divert attention from his errors. Mother’s head rocked in the lamplight, a golden sheen on her face. The corners of her mouth were turned up slightly in what looked like a sneer.
When I woke up early in the morning, a foul smell assailed my nostrils. I saw Mother in a chair, leaning against the wall, fast asleep. Sima Ting was squatting on a bench next to the kang, he too was asleep, looking like a perched eagle. The floor in front of the kang was littered with yellow cigarette butts.
Ji Qiongzhi, who would later be my homeroom teacher, came down from the county government and started a Woman’s Remarriage Campaign in Dalan Town. She brought with her a bunch of female officials who acted like a herd of wild horses; they called a meeting of all the township widows to publicize a campaign to have them remarry. Under their active mobilization and organization, just about all the widows in our village found husbands.
The only widows to become obstacles to this campaign were those of the Shangguan family. No one dared to seek the hand of my eldest sister, Laidi, since all the local bachelors knew she’d been the wife of the traitor Sha Yueliang, had been exploited by Sima Ku, who’d fled the revolution, and that she’d also been the wife of the revolutionary soldier Speechless Sun. Even in death, these three men were no one to get on the bad side of. Mother fell within the age limit set by Ji Qiongzhi, but she refused to remarry. The moment the official stepped foot in the door to try to talk Mother around, she was sent away with a barrage of curses. “Get out of my house!” Mother yelled. “Why, I’m older than your mother!”
But, strangely enough, when Ji Qiongzhi herself came over to give it a try, Mother spoke to her genially: “Young lady,” she said, “who do you plan to have marry me?”
“Someone younger than you would not be a good match, aunty,” Ji Qiongzhi said, “and about the only man in your age group is Sima Ting. Even though there are blemishes in his history, he set everything straight with his meritorious service. Besides, you two have a special relationship.”
With a wry smile, Mother said, “Young lady, his younger brother is my son-in-law.”
“What does that matter?” Ji Qiongzhi said. “You’re not related by blood.”
The wedding ceremony for forty-five widows took place in the decrepit old church. I attended, in spite of the anger I felt. Mother took her place among the widows, with what looked like a pink tinge to her puffy face. Sima was standing with the men, scratching his head with his crippled hand the whole time, maybe to cover his embarrassment.
On behalf of the government, Ji Qiongzhi gave each of the new couples a towel and a bar of soap. The township head presented them with marriage certificates. Mother blushed like a young maiden as she accepted the towel and certificate.
Wicked thoughts burned in my heart. My face was hot with a sense of shame for Mother. There was only dust on the spot on the wall where the jujube Jesus had once hung. And on the platform where Pastor Malory had baptized me stood a bunch of brazen men and women. They seemed to be cowering, their glances evasive, like a gang of thieves. Even though Mother’s hair had turned gray, here she was, about to marry the elder brother of her own son-in-law. One of the female officials scattered some withered China rose petals from a yellow gourd ladle in the direction of the hapless new couples. Some landed on Mother’s gray hair, which was slicked down with elm sap, falling like dirty rain, or shriveled bird feathers.
Like a dog whose soul had taken flight, I slunk out of the church. There, on the ancient street, I saw Pastor Malory, a black robe draped across his shoulders, slowly wandering along. His face was mud-spattered; tender yellow buds of wheat were sprouting in his hair. His eyes, looking like frozen grapes, shone with the light of sorrow. In a loud voice, I reported to him that Mother had married Sima Ting. I saw his face twitch in agony, and watched as his frame and the black robe began to break up and dissolve into curls of black, stinking smoke.
Eldest Sister was in the yard, her snowy white neck bent down as she washed her lush black hair. In that position, her lovely pink breasts were singing like a pair of silky-voiced orioles. When she straightened up, crystalline beads of water coursed down the valley between her breasts. With one hand, she coiled the back of her hair as she narrowed her eyes and looked at me, a smirk on her face. “Are you aware,” I said, “that she’s marrying Sima Ting?” Again that smirk; she ignored me. Mother walked into the house hand in hand with Shangguan Yunii, shameful rose petals still stuck to her hair. Dejected Sima Ting was right behind them. Eldest Sister picked up her basin and flung the water into the air, where it spread into a luminous fan. Mother sighed, but said nothing. Sima Ting handed his medal to me, either to win me over or to prove his worth, but I just stared at him solemnly. A look of hypocrisy was frozen on his smiling face. He averted his eyes and covered his embarrassment with a cough. I flung the medal away. It flew over the rooftop like a bird, trailing a gold-colored ribbon behind it. “Go pick that up!” Mother said angrily. “No,” I replied defiantly.
Sima Ting said, “Let it be, forget it. There’s no need to keep that around.”
Mother slapped me.
I fell backward and rolled around on the ground. Mother kicked me.
“Shame on you!” I spat out venomously. “You have no shame!”
Mother’s head slumped from her weighty sorrow and a loud wail burst from her mouth; she turned and ran tearfully into the house. Sima Ting sighed before squatting beneath the pear tree to have a smoke.
Several cigarettes later, he stood up and said, “Go in and talk to your mother, nephew. Get her to stop crying.” Then he took the marriage certificate out of his pocket, tore it into strips, and tossed them to the ground just before walking out of the yard, stooped over, an old man, like a candle guttering in the wind.
3
At the height of the age of bluster, Sima Ku gave his revered mentor, the nearsighted Qin Er, a pair of rhinestone eyeglasses. Now, with the counterrevolutionary gift perched on his nose, Qin was sitting at a brick rostrum holding an open volume of Chinese literature, his voice trembling as he lectured to us, Northeast Gaomi Township’s first freshman class, a group whose ages varied dramatically. The heavy eyeglasses slid halfway down the bridge of his nose; a single drop of oily green snot hung from the tip of his nose, threatening to drop to the floor, but somehow hanging on. Big goats are big— he intoned. Even though it was already the sixth month, among the hottest of the year, he sat there wearing a lined, black, full-length robe and a black satin skullcap with a red tassel. Big goats are big — we shouted out the words, trying to mimic his tone of voice. Little goats are little — he intoned sorrowfully. The room was stifling, dark and dank, and we sat there, barefoot and shirtless, our bodies covered with greasy sweat, while our teacher, dressed for winter, his face pale and his lips purple, looked as if he were freezing. Little goats are little — our voices resounded in the room, which smelled like stale urine, like a neglected goat pen. Big goats and little goats run up the hill — Big goats and little goats run up the hill — Big goats run, little goats bleat — Big goats run, little goats bleat — given m
y profound knowledge of goats, I knew that big goats, with their sagging teats, couldn’t run; why, they could barely walk. For little goats to bleat was entirely possible, and, for that matter, to run. Big goats grazed lazily in the pasture, while little goats ran around bleating. I was tempted to raise my hand to ask the venerable teacher his opinion, but I didn’t dare. A discipline ruler lay in front of him, its sole purpose to smack the palms of disobedient students’ hands. Big goats eat a lot — Big goats eat a lot — Little goats eat a little — Little goats eat a little— those were true statements. Of course big goats eat more than little goats, and little goats eat less than big goats. Big goats are big — little goats are little — with that, we went back and started over from the beginning. The teacher intoned on and on tirelessly, but classroom order began to fall apart. One of the students, Wu Yunyu, was a tall, husky eighteen-year-old son of a farm laborer. He was already married to the widowed proprietor of a bean curd shop, who was eight years his senior and in the last stage of pregnancy. He was about to become a daddy. The soon-to-be daddy took a rusty pistol from his waistband and took aim at the red tassel of Qin Er’s cap. Big goats run — Big goats — pow! Ha ha ha ha, run — The teacher looked up, his gray ovine eyes peering down over the top of the rhinestone lenses. He was so myopic he probably couldn’t see a thing. So he went back to reading. Little goats bleat—pow! Wu Yunyu fired off another imaginary shot, and the red tassel on the old teacher’s cap fluttered. Laughter filled the room. The teacher picked up his ruler and smacked the table. “Quiet!” he demanded, like a judge. The recitation recommenced. Guo Qiusheng, the seventeen-year-old son of a poor peasant, left his seat at a crouch and tiptoed up to the rostrum, where he stood behind the teacher, bit his lower lip with his ratlike front teeth, and made gestures of stuffing shells into a mortar, the barrel of which was the top of the teacher’s bony skull. Over and over he fired his imaginary weapon. Chaos took over in the classroom, with all of us rocking back and forth laughing. Xu Lianhe, a big boy, pounded his desk, while the smaller but fatter Fang Shuzhai tore out the pages of his book and flung them into the air, where they fluttered like butterflies.
The old teacher banged the table over and over, but that didn’t quiet things down. He kept peering over his eyeglasses, trying to determine the cause of all the commotion; meanwhile, Guo Qiusheng was furiously acting out his violently humiliating performance behind
Qin Er, eliciting strange yells from all the idiotic boys over the age of fifteen. Then Guo Qiusheng’s hand brushed against the ear of the old teacher, who spun around and grabbed the offending hand.
“Recite your lesson!” the stately old teacher demanded.
Guo Qiusheng stood at the rostrum with his hands at his side, trying to look the part of the obedient student. But the smirk on his face betrayed him. He pointed his lips to turn his mouth into what looked like a belly button. Then he shut one eye and twisted his mouth as far as it would go to one side. He clenched his teeth, making his ears wiggle.
“Recite your lesson!” the teacher roared angrily.
Guo Qiusheng began: Big girls are big, little girls are little, big girls chase the little girls away.
Amid the crazed laughter that followed, Qin Er stood up by gripping the edge of the table. His gray beard quivered as he muttered: “Bad boy! Bad boys cannot be taught!” He groped for his ruler, grabbed Guo Qiusheng’s hand, and pressed it down on the table. “Bad boy!” Pa. The ruler landed savagely on the hand of Guo Qiusheng, who cried out hoarsely. The teacher looked him in the eye and raised the ruler over his head; but his arm froze when he saw the insolent look of a proletarian thug on Guo’s face, those steely black eyes glinting with a hateful defiance. A look of defeat crept into the teacher’s rheumy gaze, and he let his arm drop weakly to his side, ruler in hand. He mumbled and took off his eyeglasses, which he placed in a metal case, wrapped with a piece of blue cloth, and put into his pocket. He also tucked the offending ruler, with which he’d once punished Sima Ku, into his robe. That done, he removed his skullcap, bowed to Guo Qiusheng, then turned and bowed to the class, and finally announced in a mournful voice that evoked both pity and disgust:
“Gentlemen, I, Qin Er, am a thickheaded old fool, no better than the mantis who thought it could stop a wagon, someone who has overrated his own abilities, a man who has outlived his usefulness and has shamed himself by hanging on to life. I have deeply offended you, and can only beg for your forgiveness!”
He then clasped his fists in front of his midriff and respectfully shook them several times, before crouching over like a cooked shrimp and leaving the classroom with light, unsteady steps. Once he was outside, we heard the muddled sound of his coughing.
Thus ended our first class of the day.
Our second class was music.
Music — our instructor, Ji Qiongzhi, who had been sent down by the county government, laid the tip of her pointer on the blackboard, where large words had been written in chalk, and said in a high-pitched voice — “For this class in music, there will be no textbook. Our textbooks will be here” — she pointed to her head, her chest — “and here” — she pointed to her diaphragm. She turned to write on the blackboard as she continued, “There are lots of ways to make music — on a flute or fiddle, humming a tune or singing an aria — it’s all music. You may not understand now, but you will someday. Singing is a form of chanting, but not always. Singing is an important musical activity and, for a remote village like this, will be the most important aspect of our music lessons. So today we will learn a song,” she went on as she wrote on the blackboard. From where I sat, looking out the window, I could see the counterrevolutionary’s son, Sima Liang, and the traitor’s daughter, Sha Zaohua, both of whom had been refused permission to attend classes and were assigned to tending sheep, gazing wistfully at the schoolhouse. They were standing in knee-high grass, backed by a dozen or more thick-stemmed sunflowers, with their broad green leaves and brilliant yellow flowers. All those yellow faces mirrored the melancholy in my heart. Seeing the flashing eyes brought tears to mine. As I took measure of the window, with its thick willow lattices, I imagined myself turning into a thrush and flying outside to bathe in the golden sunlight of a summer afternoon and perch on the head of one of those sunflowers, alongside all the aphids and ladybugs.
The song we were being taught that day was “Women’s Liberation Anthem.” Our teacher bent over at the waist as she scribbled the last few lines at the bottom of the blackboard. The fullness of her upraised backside reminded me of a mare’s rump. A feathered arrow, its tip smeared with sticky peachtree sap, made its lopsided way past me and hit her upraised backside. Evil laughter swept through the classroom. The archer, Ding Jingou, who sat right behind me, waved his bamboo bow triumphantly a time or two before quickly hiding it from sight. Our music teacher retrieved the arrow from its target and smiled as she looked it over, then flung it down on the table, where it stuck straight up after quivering briefly. “Nice shooting,” she said calmly as she laid down her pointer and shed her military jacket, which was white from countless washings. With the jacket gone, her white short-sleeved, V-necked blouse, with its turned-down collar, dazzled our eyes. It was tucked into her trousers, which were cinched by a wide leather belt that had turned black and shiny with age. She had a thin waist, high, arching breasts, and full hips. Her military trousers had also turned white from countless washings. Finally, she had on a pair of fashionable white sneakers. To make her appearance more appealing, she cinched her belt even tighter right in front of us. She smiled and displayed all the charm of a lovely white fox; but the smile disappeared as quickly as it had come, and she now displayed the ferocity of a white fox. “You’ve just driven away Qin Er. What heroes!” With a smirk she removed the arrow from the table and jiggled it with three fingers. “What a remarkable arrow,” she said. “Is it Li Guang’s? Or maybe Hua Rong’s. Anyone dare to stand up and put a name to this?” Her lovely black eyes swept the classroom. No one stood up. She grabbed her pointer. F
owl She smacked the table. “I’m warning you,” she said, “in my classroom you’ll wrap all your little hoodlum tricks in a piece of cotton and take them home to your mothers” — “Teacher, my mother’s dead!” Wu Yunyu shouted—”Whose mother is dead?” she asked. “Stand up.” Wu Yunyu stood up, trying to look unconcerned. “Come up to the front, where I can see you.” Wu Yunyu, wearing a greasy snakeskin cap down low over his wispy head — as it was all year round, even, it was said, when he slept at night or bathed in the river — strutted up to the front of the classroom. “What’s your name?” she asked with a smile. Wu Yunyu told her his name with blustery airs. “Students,” she said, “my name is Ji Qiongzhi. I was orphaned as a baby and spent my first seven years living in a garbage heap. I then joined a traveling circus. There isn’t a hoodlum or delinquent type I haven’t seen. I learned to do stunt cycling, walk a tightrope, swallow a sword, and spit fire. Then I became an animal trainer, starting with dogs and moving to monkeys, bears, and finally tigers. I can teach a dog to jump through a hoop, a monkey to climb a pole, a bear to ride a bicycle, and a tiger to roll over. At the age of seventeen, I joined a revolutionary army. I’ve battled the enemy, my sword entering white and exiting bright red. At twenty, I was sent to the South China Military Academy, where I learned sports, painting, singing, and dancing. At twenty-five I married Ma Shengli, head of intelligence at the Public Security Bureau and a champion wrestler whom I can fight to a draw.” She brushed back her short hair. She had a dark, healthy, revolutionary face; pert breasts that strained proudly against her shirt; a valiant nose, fierce, thin lips, and teeth as white as limestone. “I, Ji Qiongzhi, am not afraid of tigers,” she said as dryly as plant ash, as she glared contemptuously at Wu Yunyu. “So do you think I’m afraid of you?” At the same time she was voicing her contempt, she reached out with her pointer, inserting the tip under the edge of Wu’s cap, and, with a flick of the wrist, tore it off his head, like flipping a flatcake on a griddle, with an audible whoosh. It all happened in a mere second. Wu covered his head with both hands, the scalp looking like a rotten potato; his arrogant expression disappeared without a trace and was replaced by a look of stupidity. Still holding his head, he looked up, searching for the object that kept his disfigurement hidden. It was high up in the air, dancing and spinning on the tip of her pointer, round and round like a circus performer’s prop; the sight of his cap spinning so artfully, so captivatingly, drove the soul right out of Wu Yunyu’s body. Another flick of her wrist, and the cap soared into the air, only to settle back onto the tip of the pointer and spin some more. I was dazzled. She flung it into the air again. But this time, she guided the ugly, smelly thing so that it landed at Wu Yunyu’s feet. “Put that crummy hat back on your head and get your ass back in your seat,” she said with a look of disgust. “I’ve eaten more salt than you have noodles,” she said as she picked the arrow up off the table. Her glare landed on one of the students. “You! I’m talking to you,” she said icily. “Bring me that bow!” Ding Jingou stood up nervously, walked to the platform, and obediently laid the bow on the table. “Back to your seat!” she said, picking up the bow. She tried it out. “The bamboo’s too soft, and the bowstring’s next to useless! The best bowstrings are made from a cow’s tendon.” Fitting the feathered arrow onto the horsehair string, she pulled it back lightly and took aim at Ding Jingou’s head. He scrambled under his desk. Just then a fly buzzed in on the light streaming through the window. Ji Qiongzhi took careful aim. Twang, went the horsehair string. The fly dropped to the floor. “Anyone need more proof?” she asked. Not a peep from any of the students. She smiled sweetly, forming a dimple on her chin. “Now we can begin. Here are the lyrics to our song”: