“Stop talking nonsense!” Mother reprimanded her. “You wouldn’t be expected to do that even if the two of you had been properly married.”
By the tenth or twelfth time she asked the same question, Mother lost patience and said pointedly, “Laidi, does face mean anything to you? When you hooked up with him, it was nothing more than a brother-in-law taking up with his sister-in-law, a shameful act in anyone’s book.”
First Sister was stunned. “Mother,” she said, “you’ve changed.”
“Yes, I’ve changed,” Mother said, “and yet I’m still the same. Over the past ten or more years, members of the Shangguan family have died off like stalks of chives, and others have been born to take their place. Where there’s life, death is inevitable. Dying’s easy; it’s living that’s hard. The harder it gets, the stronger the will to live. And the greater the fear of death, the greater the struggle to keep on living. I want to be around on the day my children and grandchildren rise to the top, so I expect all of you to make a good showing for my sake!”
Her eyes, wet with tears, yet spitting fire, swept across our faces, resting finally on me, as if I were the repository of all her hopes. That made me incredibly fearful and restive, since, with the exceptions of an ability to memorize school lessons and sing the “Women’s Liberation Anthem” with a degree of accuracy, I couldn’t think of a thing I was particularly good at. I was a crybaby, I was scared of my own shadow, and I was a weakling, sort of like a castrated sheep.
“Get yourselves ready,” Mother said, “so we can give him a proper send-off. He’s a bastard, but he’s also a man worthy of the name. In days past, a man like that would come around once every eight or ten years. I’m afraid we’ve seen the last of his kind.”
We stood as a family on the river dike and watched the people around us slink away. Many sideward glances were cast our way. Sima Liang tried to move up closer, but Mother grabbed hold of his arm. “Stay right here, Liang. We’ll watch from a distance. If we’re too close, it’ll just give him something else to worry about.”
The sun rose high in the sky as truckloads of armed, helmeted soldiers crept across the Flood Dragon River Bridge and through the breach in the dike. They wore the looks of men confronted by a powerful enemy. After the trucks came to a stop beside the tent, the soldiers jumped to the ground in pairs and dispersed rapidly to form a blockade line. Two soldiers then climbed out of one of the trucks and opened the tailgate. Out stepped Sima Ku, wearing a pair of shiny handcuffs, in the custody of a squad of soldiers. He stumbled when he was pushed to the ground, but was immediately picked up by a tall, robust soldier who was obviously handpicked for this assignment. Sima Ku, his swollen legs covered with thick blood, stumbled along with his captors, leaving putrid-smelling footprints in the dirt. They led him over to the tent and up onto the raised platform. Out-of-town witnesses who were seeing Sima Ku for the first time, and had assumed him to be a murderous demon, half man-half beast, a monster with fangs and a ferocious, green face, later said that seeing him in person had been a disappointment. This middle-aged man with his shaved head and big, sad eyes didn’t look threatening at all. In fact, he struck them as a guileless, good-natured fellow, and had them wondering if the police had arrested the wrong man.
The trial quickly got underway, beginning with the magistrate’s reading of Sima Ku’s crimes and ending with the pronouncement of the death sentence. Soldiers then led him down off the platform. He hobbled as he walked, causing the soldiers to stumble as they held his arms. The procession halted at the edge of the pond, the infamous execution site. Sima Ku turned to face the dike. Maybe he spotted us, and maybe he didn’t. Sima Liang called out, “Daddy,” but Mother quickly clapped her hand over his mouth.
“Liang,” she whispered in his ear, “be a good boy, and do as I say. I know how you feel, but it’s important that we don’t make your daddy feel any worse than he does now. Let him face this last challenge free from worries.”
Mother’s words worked like a magic charm, transforming Sima Liang from a mad dog into a tame sheep.
A pair of powerful-looking soldiers grabbed Sima Ku’s shoulders and forced him to turn around to face the execution pond, whose thirty-year accumulation of rainwater had the appearance of lemon oil, in which his gaunt face and scarred cheeks looked back at him. With his back to the squad of soldiers and facing the pond, he saw countless women’s faces reflected in the water, their smell floating up from the surface, and he was suddenly overcome by a sense of his own frailty; turbulent waves of emotion overwhelmed the calmness in his heart. He wrenched himself from the grip of the soldiers to turn back around, throwing a fright into the director of the Judicial Department of the County Security Bureau, as well as the executioners, who were known for their ability to kill without batting an eye.
“I won’t let you shoot me in the back!” he shouted shrilly.
Facing the stony stares of his executioners, he felt stabs of pain from the scars on his cheeks. Sima Ku, for whom face was so important, was overcome with regret as the events of the day before surfaced in his mind.
When the legal representative had handed down the article of execution, Sima Ku had received it joyfully. The representative had asked if he had any last requests. Rubbing his stubble, he’d said, “I’d like to have a barber shave my head,” to which the representative had replied, “I’ll take that back to my superiors.”
The barber arrived, carrying his little case, and approached the condemned cell with obvious trepidation. After haphazardly shaving his head, he turned his razor to the beard. But about halfway, he nicked Sima Ku on the cheek, drawing a screech from the victim, so frightening the barber that he leaped back toward the cell door and placed himself between the two armed guards.
“That guy’s hair is pricklier than hog bristles,” the barber said as he showed the guards the nicked razor. “The blade’s ruined. And his beard’s even worse. It’s like a wire brush. He must concentrate his strength at the roots of his beard.”
So the barber gathered up his stuff and was about to leave, when he was stopped short by a curse from Sima Ku: “You son of a bitch, what do you think you’re doing? Do you expect me to go to meet my ancestors with half my face shaved?”
“You, there, condemned man,” the barber shot back. “Your beard’s tough enough already, and then you go concentrating your strength there.”
Not knowing whether to laugh or to cry, Sima Ku said, “Don’t blame the toilet when you can’t do your business. I have no idea what you mean by concentrating my strength somewhere.”
“The way you keep grunting, if that isn’t concentrating your strength, what is it?” the barber replied cleverly. “I’m not deaf, you know.”
“You bastard!” Sima Ku said. “I’m groaning from all the pain.”
One of the guards said to the barber, “You’ve got a job to do. So suck it up and finish shaving him.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Go find a master barber.”
Sima Ku sighed and said, “Shit, where in the world did you find this piece of rubbish? Take off these handcuffs, men, and I’ll shave myself.”
“Not on your life!” one of the guards said. “If you used that as a ploy to attack us and run off, or kill yourself, it would be on our heads.”
“Fuck your old lady!” Sima Ku bellowed. “I want to see whoever’s in charge.” He banged his handcuffs noisily against the window bars.
A security officer came running over. “What do you think you’re doing, Sima Ku,” she demanded.
“Look at my face,” Sima said. “He shaved half and then stopped because he said my beard’s too tough. Does that make sense to you?”
“No,” she said as she slapped the barber’s shoulder. “Why won’t you finish shaving him?”
“His beard’s too tough. And he keeps concentrating his strength in the roots …”
“Fuck your ancestors, with all that talk about concentrating strength!”
The barber held up his damage
d razor in defense of his position.
“How about acting like a man, friend?” Sima Ku said to her. “Take off these handcuffs, and I’ll shave myself. It’s the last favor I’ll ever ask.”
The officer, who had participated in Sima’s capture, hesitated momentarily before turning to one of the guards and saying, “Take them off.”
With a sense of foreboding, the guard did as he was told, then jumped back out of harm’s way. Sima Ku rubbed his swollen wrists. When he stuck out his hand, the officer took the razor from the barber and handed it to Sima, who took it and gazed at her dark, grapelike eyes, which were topped by bushy eyebrows. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll attack you, or run off, or kill myself?”
“If you did,” she said with a smile, “then you wouldn’t be Sima Ku.”
With a sigh, Sima said, “I never dreamed it would take a woman to really understand me!”
She smiled scornfully.
Sima stared at the woman’s hard, red lips, and then let his gaze move down to her chest, which arched upward under her khaki uniform. “You’ve got nice breasts, little sister,” he said.
Grinding her teeth in anger, she said, “Is that all you can think about the day before you’re going to die?”
“Little sister,” Sima replied somberly, “I’ve screwed a lot of women in my life, and my only regret is that I’ve never screwed a Communist.”
Furious, she slapped him, so loud and so hard that dust rained down from the rafters. He smiled impishly and said, “I’ve got a young sister-in-law who’s a Communist. She has a firm political stance and nice, firm breasts …”
As her face reddened, the officer spat in Sima’s face and said in a low growl, “Be careful, you mangy mongrel, or I might cut your balls off!”
Sima Ting cried out, his voice filled with sadness and anger, rousing Sima Ku from his anguished thoughts. What he saw was a squad of militiamen dragging his elder brother up to the crowd of onlookers. “I’m innocent — innocent! I’ve rendered great service, and I broke off relations with my brother a long time ago!” No one paid any attention to Sima Ting’s tearful pleas. Sima Ku sighed, as threads of guilt filtered into his heart. When the chips were down, the man was a good and loyal brother, even if you couldn’t trust some of the things he said.
Sima Ting’s legs were so rubbery he couldn’t stand. A village official demanded, “Tell me, Sima Ting, where’s the Felicity Manor treasure vault? If you don’t tell me, you can walk down the same road as him!” “There’s no treasure vault. During land reform, they dug down three feet and didn’t find anything,” Sima Ku’s wretched brother pled his case. Sima Ku grinned and said, “Quit your bitching, Elder Brother!” “It’s all your fault, you bastard!” Sima Ting complained. Sima Ku just shook his head with a wry smile. “Stop this nonsense!” a security bureau officer rebuked the village officials, resting his hand on the butt of his holstered pistol. “Take that man away! Don’t you give a damn about policy?” As they dragged Sima Ting away, the village official said, “We figured this might be a good opportunity to get something out of him.”
The man in charge of the execution raised a little red flag and announced in a loud voice, “Ready —”
The firing squad raised their weapons, waiting for the command. An icy grin spread across Sima Ku’s face as he stared down the black muzzles of the rifles aimed at him. A red glare rose above the dike, and the smell of women blanketed heaven and earth. Sima Ku shouted:
“Women are wonderful things —”
The dull crack of rifle fire split Sima Ku’s head like a ripe melon, sending blood and brain in all directions. His body stiffened for a brief moment, and then toppled forward. At that moment, like the climactic scene in a play, just before the curtain drops, the widow Cui Fengxian from Sandy Mouth Village, wearing a red satin jacket over green satin pants, a spray of golden-yellow silk flowers in her hair, flew down from the top of the dike and lay on the ground beside Sima Ku. I assumed she would begin to wail over the corpse, but she didn’t. Maybe the sight of Sima Ku’s shattered skull drove the courage out of her. She took a pair of scissors from her waistband, which I thought she was going to plunge into her breast to accompany Sima Ku in death. But she didn’t. In the midst of all those staring eyes, she plunged the scissors into Sima Ku’s dead chest. Then she covered her face, shattered the stillness with shrieks of grief, and staggered off as fast as her feet would take her.
The crowd of onlookers stood there like wooden stakes. Sima Ku’s decidedly inelegant last words had bored their way into their hearts, tickling them as they crawled around mischievously. Are women really wonderful things? Maybe they are. Yes, women definitely are wonderful things, but when all is said and done, they aren’t really “things.”
Chapter Six
1
On the day of Shangguan Jintong’s eighteenth birthday, Shangguan Pandi took Lu Shengli away with her. Jintong sat on the dike gazing unhappily at swallows soaring above the river. Sha Zaohua came out of the woods and handed him his birthday present — a little mirror. The dark-skinned girl already had nicely developed breasts; her dark, slightly crossed eyes looked like pebbles on the river bottom and were filled with the glow of passion. “Why don’t you keep it for Sima Liang when he gets back?” Jintong said. She reached into her pocket and took out a larger mirror. “This one’s for him.” “Where’d you get so many mirrors?” Jintong asked, obviously surprised. “I stole them from the co-op,” she said in a soft voice. “I met a thief wizard at the Wopu Market who took me on as her apprentice. After I finish my apprenticeship, if there’s anything you need, just tell me, and I’ll steal it for you. My teacher stole a watch off the wrist of a Soviet adviser and a gold tooth right out of his mouth.” “But that’s against the law.” “She said minor thievery is against the law, but not big-time stealing.” Taking Jintong’s fingers in her hand, she said, “You’ve got soft, slender fingers. You’d make a good thief.” “No, not me. I don’t have the nerve. But Sima Liang does, he’s got guts and he’s always vigilant. He’s your man. You can teach him when he gets back.” As Zaohua put away the big mirror, she said “Liangzi, Liangzi, when will you be coming back?” sounding like a grown-up woman.
* * *
Sima Liang had disappeared five years earlier. We buried Sima Ku the day after he was shot, and Sima Liang took off that night. A cold, dank wind from the northeast made the chipped pots and jugs on the wall sing out gloomily. We sat dully in front of a solitary lantern, and when the wind blew out the flame, we sat in the darkness. No one spoke; we were all caught up in the scene surrounding Sima Ku’s burial. Lacking a coffin, we had to wrap his body in a straw mat, like a leek in a flat-cake, good and tight, and truss it up with rope. A dozen or so people carried his body over to the public cemetery, where we dug a hole. Then we stood at the head of the grave, where Sima Liang fell to his knees and kowtowed once. There were no tears on his finely wrinkled face. I wanted to say something to make this dear friend of mine feel better, but couldn’t think of a thing. On the road home, he whispered, “I’m going to take off, Little Uncle.” “Where to?” I asked him. “I don’t know.” At the moment the wind blew out the lantern flame, I thought I saw a dark, hazy image slip out the door, and I was pretty sure that Sima Liang had left, though there wasn’t a sound. Just like that, he was gone. With a bamboo pole, Mother probed the bottom of every dry well and deep pond in the area, but I knew she was wasting her time, since Sima Liang was not the type to kill himself. Mother then sent people into neighboring villages to look for him, but all she got were conflicting reports. One person said he’d spotted him in a traveling circus, while someone else said he’d seen the body of a little boy by the side of a lake, his face pecked clean by vultures; a group of conscripts back from the Northeast said they’d seen him near a bridge over the Yalu River. The Korean War was heating up then, and U.S. warplanes came on daily bombing runs.
I looked into the little mirror Zaohua had given me, getting my first good view of my features.
At eighteen, I had a shock of yellow hair, pale, fleshy ears, brows the color of ripe wheat, and sallow lashes that cast a shadow over deep blue eyes. A high nose, pink lips, skin covered with fine hairs. To tell the truth, I’d already gotten an idea of what I looked like by looking at Eighth Sister. With a sense of sadness, I was forced to admit that Shangguan Shouxi was definitely not our father, and that whoever he was, he looked like the man people sometimes talked about in hushed conversations. We were, I realized, the illegitimate offspring of the Swedish man of the cloth, Pastor Malory, a couple of bastards. Frightful inferiority feelings gnawed at my heart. I dyed my hair black and darkened my face, but there was nothing I could do about the color of my eyes, which I’d have liked to gouge out altogether. I recalled stories I’d heard about people who committed suicide by swallowing gold, so I rummaged around in Laidi’s jewelry box until I found a gold ring dating back to Sha Yueliang’s days. I stretched out my neck and swallowed the thing, then lay down on the kang to await death, while Eighth Sister sat on the edge of the kang spinning thread. When Mother returned from work at the co-op and saw me lying there, she caught her breath in surprise. I expected her to feel a sense of shame, but what I saw instead was a look of terrifying anger. She grabbed me by the hair and jerked me into a sitting position, then began slapping me, over and over, until my gums bled, my ears rang, and I saw stars.
“That’s right, Pastor Malory was your father, so what? Wash that stuff off your face and out of your hair, then go out in the street with your head held high, and announce: My father was the Swedish Pastor Malory, which makes me an heir to royalty, and a damned sight better than the likes of you turtles!” All the while she was slapping me, Eighth Sister sat quietly spinning her threads, as if none of this had anything to do with her.