Laidi, her heart moved to its core, her hands still soapy, slowly rose to her feet, amazed that such a tiny bird, no bigger than a walnut, could be the source of such captivating chirps. Even more important, she felt that it was sending her a mysterious message, an exciting yet fearful temptation the likes of a purple water lily floating on a pond in the moonlight. She struggled to resist the temptation, standing up so she could go inside; but her feet felt as if they’d taken root and her hands moved toward the bird as if they had a mind of their own. A flick of Birdman’s wrist sent the tiny bird into the air; it perched on Laidi’s head. She felt its delicate claws dig into her scalp and its chirps bore into her head. Gazing into the kindly, anxious, fatherly, and beautiful eyes of Birdman Han, she was swallowed up by a powerful sense of being wronged. He nodded to her, turned, and headed back to his rooms. The tiny bird flew off her head to follow him inside.
Standing there dazed, she heard Mother call from the kang. But rather than turn around, she burst into tears and, with no sense of shame, ran into the side room, where Birdman Han awaited her with open arms. Her tears wetted his chest. He let her pound him with her fists, even stroking her arms and the ridge down her back while she was hitting him. Meanwhile, the tiny bird perched on the altar table in front of the drawing, where it chirped excitedly. Little stars like drops of blood seemed to emerge from its tiny beak.
Laidi calmly removed her clothes and pointed to the scars from the mute’s abuse. “Look at that, Birdman Han,” she complained, “just look at that. He killed my sister, and now he’s trying to do the same to me. And he’ll make it. He’s worn me out.” Bursting into tears again, she threw herself down onto his bed.
This was Birdman Han’s first real look at a woman’s body. Surprise showed on his face as he thought about women, the supernatural objects his dismal experience had kept from him all his life, and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He was moved to tears by her long legs, her rounded hips, her breasts, which were flattened against the bedding, her slender waist, and the fair, glossy, jadelike skin all over her body — fairer even than her face, in spite of the scars. After being suppressed for fifteen torturous years, while he avoided falling into the hands of his captors again, his youthful desires ignited slowly. Growing weak at the knees, he knelt alongside Laidi and covered the soles of her feet with hot, tremulous kisses.
Laidi felt blue sparks sizzle up from her feet and quickly cover her body. Her skin grew taut as a drum, and then went slack. She rolled over, spread her legs, arched her body, and wrapped her arms around Birdman Han’s neck. Her experienced mouth drew the virginal Birdman to her. She broke off her passionate kiss to say breathlessly, “I want that mute bastard, that demonic stump of a man to die, I want him to rot, I want birds to peck out his eyes!”
In order to block out their cries of passion, Mother slammed shut the door and began beating a badly worn pot out in the yard. At the time, schoolchildren were searching up and down the lanes for all sorts of used metal objects to take to the smelting ovens — pots, spatulas, cleavers, door latches, thimbles, even nose rings from oxen. But our family, enjoying the prestige of the martial hero Speechless Sun and the legendary Birdman Han, was spared from having to give up our utensils. Mother waited impatiently for Birdman and Laidi to finish their lovemaking. Owing to her feelings of sympathy and remorse over the abuse Laidi had received at the hands of the mute, and to feelings of sympathy over the agonies Birdman Han had suffered in a foreign land, as well as her gratitude for the delicious birds he had supplied fifteen years before, not to mention the cherished memory of and respect for Lingdi, she assumed the role of protector in the illicit relationship between the two lovers without even being aware of it. Although she anticipated the tragic consequences that were bound to follow, she was determined to do what she could to guard their secret and, at the very least, delay the inevitable. But the inescapable truth was that once a man like Birdman Han was exposed to the passions and affections of a woman, no power on earth could restrain him. He was a man who had survived fifteen years in the woods, like a wild animal; he was a man who had existed on the swings between life and death every day for fifteen years, and in his eyes a stump of a man like the mute had no more value than a wooden stake. For Laidi, a woman who had known Sha Yueliang, Sima Ku, and Speechless Sun, three totally different men, a woman who had experienced the heat of battle, wealth, and fame, and known the mad apex of joy with Sima Ku and the demeaning nadir of physical abuse at the hands of Speechless Sun, Birdman Han offered total satisfaction. His deeply grateful touch brought her the gratification of a father’s love; his clumsy innocence in bed brought her the gratification of a sexual mentor; and his greedy consumption of forbidden fruit and unbridled passion brought her sexual gratification and the gratification of vengeance against the mute. And so, every coupling was accompanied by hot tears and sobs, with no hint of lewdness, filled with human dignity and tragedy. When they made love, their hearts overflowed with unspoken words.
The mute, a liquor bottle hanging around his neck, lurched down the crowded street. Dust flew as one gang of laborers pushed carts filled with iron ore from east to west, while another gang pushed carts of the same color from west to east. Mixed with the two crowds, the mute was leaping forward, a great leap forward. All the laborers gazed respectfully at the glittering medal pinned to his chest and stopped to let him pass, something he found enormously gratifying. Although he only came up to the other men’s thighs, he was the most spirited individual among them. From that moment on, he spent most of his daylight hours out on the street. He would leap from the eastern end of the street all the way to the western end, take a few refreshing drinks from his bottle, and then leap all the way back. And while he was engaged in his great leap forward, Laidi and Birdman Han would be performing their own great leap forward on the ground or in bed. Dust and grime covered the mute’s body; his stools had been worn down an inch or more, and a hole had opened up in the rubber mat attached to his backside. Every tree in the village had been cut down to stoke the backyard furnaces; a layer of smoke hung over the fields. Jintong had fallen in with the sparrow eradication corps, marching under bamboo poles with red strips of cloth and accompanied by the clang of gongs, as they stalked the sparrows in Northeast Gaomi Township from one village to the next, keeping them from finding food or a spot to perch, until they dropped to the streets from exhaustion and hunger. A range of stimuli had cured him of his lovesickness, and he had gotten over his obsession with mother’s milk and revulsion of food. But his prestige had plummeted. His Russian teacher, Huo Lina, to whom he was devoted, had been declared a rightist and sent to the Flood Dragon River labor reform farm, two miles from Dalan. He saw the mute out on the street, and the mute saw him, but they merely acknowledged one another with a wave before moving on.
The raucous season of rejoicing, with flames lighting up the sky, came quickly to an end, replaced in Northeast Gaomi Township by a new and dreary age. One drizzly autumn morning, twelve trucks with artillery pieces rumbled down the narrow road from the southeast into Dalan. When they entered the village, the mute was lurching around on the wet ground, all alone. He had exhausted himself during the recent days of leaping, and had turned listless. His eyes were lifeless, and because of all the liquor he’d consumed, his legless torso had grown bloated. The arrival of the artillery company reinvigorated him. Inappropriately, apparently, he moved out into the middle of the road to block the convoy. The soldiers stood there blinking in the rain and looking at the strange half-man in the middle of the road. An officer, wearing a pistol on his hip, jumped out of the cab of his truck and cursed angrily, “Tired of living, you stupid bastard?” Incredibly, since the road was slick, he was truncated, and the truck tires were tall, the mute had leaped out into the road, well out of sight of the driver, who had seen a brown streak in front of the truck and slammed on the brakes, not quite in time to keep his bumper from touching the mute’s broad forehead. Although it didn’t break the skin,
it raised a large purple welt. The officer wasn’t finished cursing when he saw the hawkish glare in the mute’s eyes and felt his heart clench; at that moment, his eye was drawn to the medal pinned to the mute’s tattered uniform. Drawing his feet together, he bowed deeply and shouted, “My apologies, sir. Please forgive me!”
This gratifying reaction put the mute in high spirits. He moved to the side of the road to let the convoy pass. The soldiers saluted as the trucks passed by slowly, which he returned by touching the beak of his soft cap with the tips of his fingers. The trucks left a chewed-up road behind them. A northwest wind blew, rain slanted down, and the road was veiled by an icy mist. A few surviving sparrows slipped through the gaps in the rain, while some water-soaked dogs standing under a roadside propaganda tent were captivated by the sight of the mute’s movements.
The passage of the artillery company signaled the end of the season of rejoicing. The mute slinked home in dejection. As before, he banged on the door with one of his stools; it opened on its own, creaking loudly. He had lived in a world of silence so long that Birdman Han and Laidi had been able to keep their adultery hidden from him. For months, he had spent most of his daylight hours out on the street near the smelting ovens, and then dragged himself home to sleep like a dead dog. Come morning, he’d be out the gate again, with no time for Laidi.
The restoration of the mute’s hearing may well be attributed to his encounter with the truck bumper. The touch on his forehead must have loosened whatever was stopping up his ears. The creaking of the door stunned him; then he heard the patter of rain on leaves and the snores of his mother-in-law as she slept. She had forgotten to latch the door. But what utterly shocked him were the moans of pain and pleasure from Laidi’s room.
Sniffing the air like a bloodhound, he detected the clammy odor of her body and lurched over to the eastern side room. The rain had leaked through his rubber cushion, soaking his backside, and he felt stabbing pains around his anus.
Recklessly, the door had been left open, and a candle burned inside. In the drawing, the Bird Fairy’s eyes shone coldly. One look, and he spotted Birdman Han’s long, hairy, and enviably sturdy legs. Birdman’s buttocks were pumping up and down; beneath him, Laidi’s buttocks arched upward. Her breasts sagged and jiggled; her tousled black hair shifted on Birdman Han’s pillow, and she was clutching the bed sheet. The intense moans that had so aroused him were coming from the mass of black hair. The scene was lit up as if by an explosive green flame. He howled like a wounded animal and flung one of his stools; it glided off Birdman’s shoulder, bounced off the wall, and landed next to Laidi’s face. He threw the other stool; this one hit Birdman in the rump. He turned and glared at the drenched mute, who was shivering from the cold, and grinned smugly. Laidi’s body flattened out and she lay there panting as she reached down to cover herself with the blanket. “You’ve seen us, you mute bastard, so what?” She sat up and cursed the mute, who propped himself up on both hands, froglike. He bounded across the threshold, and from there to the feet of Birdman Han, where he lunged forward with his head. Birdman’s hands flew to his groin to protect the organ that just moments ago had been such a masterful performer; with a shriek he doubled over and yellow beads of perspiration dotted his face. The mute charged again, harder this time, scissoring Birdman’s shoulders with his powerful arms, like the tentacles of an octopus; at the same time, he wrapped his cal-lused hands, the steel traps in which his strength was concentrated, around Birdman’s throat. Birdman crumpled to the floor; his mouth opened in a fearful grimace, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
Laidi snapped out of her state of panic, picked up the stool lying next to her pillow, and jumped out of bed, naked. As soon as her feet touched the floor, she attacked the mute’s arms with the stool, but with no more effect than if she were hitting the trunk of a tree. So she then swung at his head, creating a thump like hitting a ripe melon, before dropping the stool and picking up the heavy door bolt, which she swung in the air and brought down on the mute’s head. He groaned, but his body remained upright. After the second hit, the mute let loose of Birdman’s throat, wobbled for a moment, then crashed headlong to the floor. Birdman slumped over on top of him.
The clamor in the side room woke Mother, who shuffled up to the door; it was over by then, and the outcome was sorrowfully obvious. She saw Laidi, naked, leaning weakly against the door, then watched as she dropped the bloody door bolt and walked out into the downpour, as if in a trance. The rain skittered off her body, her ugly feet sloshing through muddy puddles on the ground. She squatted down in front of the water basin and washed her hands.
Mother went over and dragged Birdman off of the mute and, with her shoulder under his arm, helped him over to the bed. With a sense of disgust, she covered him with the blanket. She heard him moan, which meant that this legendary hero was in no danger of dying. Walking back over to the mute and lifting him up like a sack of rice, she noticed two streams of black liquid running from his nostrils. After placing her finger under his nose to detect any sign of life, she let her hand drop; the mute’s still warm corpse was sitting up straight, no longer ready to topple over.
After wiping her bloody finger on the wall, Mother walked back to her room, her mind a fog, and lay down in her clothes. Episodes from the mute’s life drifted in and out of her mind, and when she recalled how the young mute and his brothers had straddled the wall, pretending they were the kings of the world, she laughed out loud. Out in the yard, Laidi scrubbed her hands over and over, the soapy lather covering the ground around her. That afternoon, Birdman walked outside, one hand around his throat, the other cupped around his crotch. He picked Laidi up off the ground, her body icy cold; she wrapped her arms around his neck and giggled idiotically.
Somewhat later, a young military officer with pink lips and sparkling white teeth, in the company of the district chief’s secretary, walked into the yard carrying a basin covered with red paper. They called out, and when no one answered, went straight to Mother’s room.
“Aunty,” the secretary said to her, “this is Commander Song of the heavy artillery company. He’s here to pay a courtesy call on Comrade Speechless Sun.”
“My apologies, aunty,” Commander Song said bashfully. “One of our trucks nearly ran Comrade Sun over, and raised a lump on his forehead.”
Mother sat up in bed with a start. “What did you say?”
“The road was slick,” Commander Song said, “and the bumper of one of our trucks hit him in the head.
“After he returned home,” Mother said tearfully, “he groaned awhile and then died.”
The young company commander paled. He was nearly in tears when he said, “Aunty, we slammed on the brakes, but the road was slick …”
When the medical expert came over to examine the body, Laidi, neatly dressed and carrying a small bundle, said, “I’m leaving, Mother.
I’ll take things as they come, but I cannot let those soldiers take the blame.”
“Go tell the authorities,” Mother said. “It’s always been the rule that a pregnant woman has to give birth before …”
“I understand. In fact, I’ve never in my life understood anything as clearly as this.”
“I’ll raise your child for you.”
“I have no more worries, Mother.”
She walked over to the side room, where she reported, “There’s no need for an investigation. I hit him with a stool and then killed him with the bolt of a door. He was choking Birdman Han when I did it.”
Birdman walked into the yard carrying a string of dead birds. “What’s going on?” he asked. “The world now has one less half-man piece of garbage, and I’m the one who killed him.”
The police handcuffed Laidi and Birdman Han and placed them under arrest.
Five months later, a policewoman brought a baby boy to Mother, scrawny as a sick cat, and reported that Laidi was to be shot the next day. The family was free to retrieve the body, but if they chose not to, it would be sent to the hospi
tal to be dissected. The policewoman also told Mother that Birdman Han had been sentenced to life imprisonment and that he would soon begin serving his sentence at Tarim Basin, in the Uighur Autonomous Region, far from Northeast Gaomi. The family would be permitted a last visit.
By then Jintong had been expelled from school for destroying trees on campus, while Zaohua had been expelled from the drama troupe for stealing.
“We’re going to retrieve the body,” Mother said.
“I don’t see why,” Zaohua said.
“She committed a capital crime, and deserves a bullet. But it wasn’t a heinous crime.”
More than ten thousand people turned out for Shangguan Laidi’s execution. A truck brought the condemned prisoner to the execution ground at the Bridge of Sorrows. Birdman Han was in the truck with her. In order to avoid any last-minute vocal outbursts, the execution team had sealed both their mouths.
Not long after Laidi’s execution, the family received word of Birdman Han’s death. On his way to prison, he had managed to break free and died under the wheels of the train.
4
In order to reclaim tens of thousands of acres of Northeast Gaomi Township’s wasteland, all of Dalan’s able-bodied young men and women were mobilized into teams at the state-run Flood Dragon River Farm. On the day the work assignments were handed out, the director asked me, “What are you good at?” At the time, I was so hungry my ears were buzzing, and I didn’t hear him clearly. His lips parted, exposing a stainless steel tooth right in the middle, as he asked me again, louder this time, “What are you good at?” I’d just spotted my teacher, Huo Lina, on the road carrying a load of manure, and I recalled her saying that I had a natural talent for the Russian language. So I said, “I speak Russian well.” “Russian?” he said with a sneer, his stainless steel tooth glinting in the sunlight. “How well?” he asked derisively. “Good enough to be an interpreter for Khrushchev and Mikoyan? Can you handle a Sino-Soviet communiqué? Listen to me, young man. People who have studied in the Soviet Union tote manure around here. Do you think your Russian is better than theirs?” All the young laborers awaiting assignments had a good laugh over that. “I’m asking you what you do at home, what you do best.” “At home I tended a goat, that’s what I did best.” “Right,” the director said with a sneer. “Now, that’s what you’re good at. Russian and French, or English and Italian, none of those are worth a thing.” He scribbled something on a slip of paper and handed it to me. “Report to the animal brigade. Tell Commander Ma to assign you.”