Shifu, You'll Do Anything For A Laugh Part 4

I have no way of knowing how someone who exists like a wolf for fourteen years in an ancient mountain forest views time or senses its pa.s.sage. Maybe for him ten years went by like a single day, or maybe each day seemed to last ten years. His tongue had stiffened, but every syllable sounded clearly in his thoughts and in his ears: What a dense fog! A j.a.panese fog! And so the events of 1939, the fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month, when the troops under his command, including his son, hid beneath the Black Water River bridge to ambush a j.a.panese column of trucks, floated vividly into his mind. That too had been a morning when a great fog filled the sky.

Endless rows of red sorghum stalks rose up out of the dense fog. The roar of ocean waves cras.h.i.+ng against rocks became the roar of truck engines. The crisp sound of a flowing stream trickling past stone became the sound of playful laughter from Douguan, my father. The patter of animal footsteps in the valley became the heavy breathing of Granddad and his troops.

The fog was heavy, like a flowing liquid, like the cotton candy spun by Liu the Second in the village of Salt.w.a.ter Harbor. You could hold it in your hand, or reach out and tear off a piece. When my aunt Little Huaguan ate the cotton candy, it stuck to her mouth like a white beard. She was hoisted on the bayonet of a j.a.p devil. ... A crippling pain made him curl into a ball. He bared his teeth and loosed a howl that rose from deep down in his throat. It was not the sound of a man, and, of course, it was not the sound of a wolf. It was the sound Granddad made in his fox lair.

Bullets raked the area, and the tips of sorghum stalks cascaded to the ground. Sh.e.l.ls dragged long tails behind them as they tore through the fog. They flew into the fox cave, lighting up the stone walls like molten steel, beads of clear water sizzling on hot metal, sending the odor of steam into his nostrils. On one of the outcroppings hung strips of light brown fox fur. Water in the river, scalded by bullets, cried out like the screeching of birds. The red-feathered thrush, the green-feathered lark. White eels turned belly-up in the emerald waters of the Black Water River. Large dogfish with black skins and gritty flesh leaped with loud splashes in the valley stream. Douguan's hand shook as he aimed his Browning pistol. He fired! The black steel helmet was like the sh.e.l.l of a turtle. Ping ping ping! You lousy j.a.p!

I cannot actually witness the scene of Granddad lying in his cave thinking of his homeland, but I'll never forget a habit he brought home with him. No matter how comfortable the bed, he always slept on his stomach, knees bent, his chin pillowed on crossed arms. He was like a wild animal, always wary. We could never be sure when he was sleeping and when he was awake. But the first thing I saw each time I awoke were his bright green eyes. So I have a mental picture of how he slept in his cave and of the look on his face as he lay there.

His body stayed the same as always - that is, his bone structure didn't change. His muscles, however, twitched from the constant tension. Blood flowed powerfully through his tiny veins, building up strength, like a taut bowstring. The nose on his thin, oblong face was hard as iron, his eyes burned like charcoal fires. The tangled, iron-colored hair on his head looked like a raging prairie fire.

As the fog expanded it became thin, transparent, and buoyant. From within its wavering, crisscrossing, white silk bands emerged the tips of the underbrush, the creeping nets of vines, treetops in the forest, the rigid face of the village, and the ash blue teeth of the sea. The fiery red faces of sorghum stalks often shone through the fog. But as the fog thinned out, the frequency of sorghum faces lessened. The brutal j.a.panese landscape mercilessly filled the gaps in the fog, and forced out Granddad's dreams of his homeland. Eventually the haze retreated to the wooded valley.

The red glow of an enormous ocean filled Granddad's eyes. Ash blue waves licked lazily at the sandy beach, and a blood-red ball of fire burned its way out of the depths of the ocean.

Granddad could not recall, nor was there any way he could recall, how many times he had watched the dripping wet sun leap out of the water. The blood-red fire of hope, so hot it made him tremble, raged in his heart. A vast stretch of sorghum formed neat ranks in the ocean. The stalks were the erect bodies of his sons and daughters, the leaves were their arms waving in the air, sabers glinting in the sunlight. The j.a.panese ocean became a sea of sorghum, the undulations of the ocean were the rising and falling chests of sorghum stalks, and the coursing tide was sorghum blood.

According to an entry in the historical records of Hokkaido's Sapporo city, Yos.h.i.+kawa Sadako, a peasant woman from the nearby village of Kiyota, went out to a rice paddy in the valley on the morning of October 1, 1949, where she encountered a savage who violated her. A j.a.panese friend of mine, Mr. Nagano, helped me locate this material and translated it into Chinese for me. The so-called savage was my granddad, and my purpose in citing this material is to pin down the time and place in which an important event in my granddad's narrative occurred. In the Mid-Autumn Festival of 1943, he was captured and later taken to Hokkaido as a conscript laborer. In the spring of 1944, when mountain flowers were in full bloom, he escaped from a labor camp and began his life in the mountains as part man and part beast. By October 1, 1949, the day the People's Republic was proclaimed, he had spent more than two thousand days and nights in the forest. Now the morning I'm describing, aside from the great fog that made it easy but more gut-wrenching for him to recall the fervent life he and his loved ones had led back home, has no particular significance. What happened later that afternoon is another story.

It was a typical Hokkaido morning. The fog had dispersed and the sun hung high above the sea and the forest. A few dazzling white sails drifted slowly on the water. From a distance they didn't seem to be moving at all. Strips of brown seaweed lay drying in the sun on the sand. j.a.panese fishermen gathering the seaweed wriggled in the shallow water, like so many large brown beetles. Ever since suffering at the hands of a gray-bearded fisherman, my granddad was filled with hatred for the j.a.panese, whether they wore cruel or kind faces. Now when he went down to the village at night to steal seaweed and dried fish, he no longer experienced the worthless sense of guilt. He went so far as to rip up the fis.h.i.+ng nets drying on the beach with a pair of rusty old scissors.

The sun baked down. Even the wispy fog in the valley had dissipated, and the ocean was turning white. On trees all over the mountain, large red and yellow leaves mingled with the vibrant green of pine and cedar, like tongues of fire. Sprinkled amid the deep reds and greens were columns of pure white - the bark of birch trees. Another lovely autumn day had quietly arrived. After the autumn came the severe winters, those bitter Hokkaido winters, the kind that forced Granddad to hibernate like a bear. Generally speaking, there was more fat on his body when purple flowers that were the sign of autumn bloomed on the mountain. The prospects for this particular winter were good, mainly because three days earlier he had secured this cave: open to the sun, back to the wind, it was a good and safe place to hide. His next step was to store up food for the winter. He planned to go out on ten separate nights to bring back twenty partially dried bundles of seaweed. If his luck held out, he might also be able to steal a few dried fish or potatoes.

The stream was not far from his cave, which meant he wouldn't need to worry about leaving prints in the snow, since he climbed over vines and across creepers. This would be a good winter, thanks to the cave. It was his lucky day, and he was happy. Naturally, he could not know that on that day all China quivered with excitement. As he thought about his good prospects, his son - my father - was riding a mule, wearing a new army uniform, a rifle slung over his back. He and his unit had a.s.sembled under a locust tree at the foot of the Imperial City's eastern wall, where they waited to take part in the glorious parade at Tiananmen.

Sunlight filtered through leaves and branches into Granddad's cave and fell on his hands. His fingers were the color of metal, and gnarled like talons. Scaly flakes covered the backs of his hands, and his fingernails were chipped and broken. The backs of his hands were hot and itchy from the sun. Still somewhat sleepy, he closed his eyes, and as he dozed he heard the rumble of gunfire off in the distance. The competing brilliance of gold and red lights formed a column of a thousand fine steeds, like a brocade tapestry, like the rus.h.i.+ng tide, streaming out from his chest. The intimate connection created between Granddad's hallucination and the joyous celebration of nation founding added splendor to Granddad's image. There are, of course, all sorts of theories - telepathy or supernatural powers - that might explain this inexplicable phenomenon.

Living on the mountain for years endowed Granddad with exceptionally keen senses of hearing and smell. This was not an unusual effect, nor was it a boastful fabrication; it was simply an indisputable fact. Facts are superior to eloquence, and lies cannot cover up facts. That's what Granddad often said at public meetings. Inside his cave he p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and caught a faint noise outside. The vines had moved slightly. It wasn't the wind. He knew the form and character of the wind, and could smell the difference in dozens of wind types. As he looked at the trembling vines he detected the smell of a fox, and he knew that retaliation had finally arrived. Ever since taking his knife to all four downy-furred fox cubs and tossing them out of the cave, Granddad had waited for the fox's retaliation. He was not afraid. He was fired up. After he had retreated from the world of men, the beasts had become his companions and his adversaries: wolves, bears, foxes. He knew them all well, and they knew him. After a bout of mortal combat with a bear, they had stayed out of each other's way. They still bared their teeth when they met, but their roars were intended as much to offer greetings as to display fierceness; neither would violate their gentleman's agreement of not attacking each other. The wolf feared my granddad; it was not a worthy adversary. When confronting a more ferocious animal, the wolf is no match for even a homeless mutt. But the fox, in contrast to the wolf and the bear, is a crafty, cunning little fellow, fierce only in the face of a wild hare or a farmhouse chicken.

He picked up his two prized possessions - a cleaver and a pair of scissors - one in each hand. The distinctive stink of fox and the rustling of the vines grew more acute. It was climbing toward him on the vines. Granddad had thought all along that this attack would happen in deep night. A fox's resourcefulness and liveliness is tied to the darkness of night. This broad daylight challenge to recover lost territory and avenge the murder of its cubs surprised him. When troops advance, a general mounts a defense; when floodwaters rise, there will be dirt to stop it. In other words, things will take care of themselves. Having faced far greater dangers many times, Granddad was calm and self-a.s.sured. Compared to most days, when all he did was lie low, this morning promised plenty of excitement. On the other side of the ocean, mighty mounted troops were at that moment parading past their heroic leader as he announced in a booming voice the creation of the People's Republic, while below, hundreds of thousands of faces were bathed in hot tears.

Clinging to a thick vine with its claws, the fiery red fox climbed to the level of the cave where Granddad was hiding. She wore a crafty smile and squinted in the bright sunlight. The circles around her eyes were jet black, and thick golden eyelashes sprang from her eyelids. It was the mother fox. Granddad saw two rows of dark teats, swollen with milk for the cubs she had lost. The large, fleshy red fox clung to the purple vine, her bushy tail sweeping alluringly back and forth, like a rogue melon, like an evil flame that can make even iron will waver.

Granddad felt a sudden weariness in the hand holding the cleaver. His fingers grew stiff, sore, and numb. The source of his problem lay in the fox's expression. She should have been baring her teeth in a savage snarl, instead of wagging her tail seductively and smiling sweetly. The sight stupefied Granddad and turned his fingers numb. The gently swaying vine was only a couple of feet away from the mouth of the cave. The fireball overhead shone down on the leaves of the underbrush, transforming them into shards of gold foil. All he had to do was reach out and chop through the vine to send the fox plunging into the valley below, but he couldn't lift his hand. The enchantment of the fox was boundless, the heft of his cleaver immeasurable. Legends of foxes surged into his mind, and he wondered when he had ama.s.sed so much fox lore. With no pistol at hand, he felt his courage wane. Back in those days when he'd sat astride his black steed, weapon in hand, he had feared nothing.

High-pitched trills from the fox accompanied the wagging of her tail, imitating the sound of a weeping woman. Granddad couldn't understand why he hesitated, why he was suddenly impotent. Aren't you still the bandit Yu Zhan'ao, who killed without batting an eye? He clutched the crumbling handle of his knife and hunkered down to await the attack from the fox as it swung back and forth on the vine. His heart was thumping, and spurts of icy blood rushed to his skull, suffusing the area in front of his eyes with the color of ice and water. p.r.i.c.kly pains attacked his temples. Apparently, the fox had seen through his plan of action. She was still swinging, but the arc was lessening. Now Granddad would have to lean way out to hack at her. The look on her face was more and more that of a l.u.s.tful woman. It was a look with which he was very familiar. Granddad sensed that in an instant the fox could transform herself into a woman in white mourning clothes. So he thrust himself forward, grabbed the vine with one hand, and with the other aimed at the fox's head.

The fox swooped down. Granddad lunged after it, and nearly fell out of the cave. But he managed to strike the fox on the head with his rusty knife. Then, just as he was drawing his body back into the cave, he heard a scream above him. A hot, fetid smell descended with the scream, enveloping his body. A large fox bore down on his back, its paws wrapped tightly around his chest and abdomen, its taut, bushy tail fanning the air excitedly. The coa.r.s.e fur p.r.i.c.ked painfully into Granddad's thighs. At the same time he felt the fox's hot breath on his neck, which hunched inward by reflex. Goose b.u.mps covered his legs, as something dug excruciatingly into the nape of his neck. The fox was biting him. Only then did he comprehend the treachery of foxes in Hokkaido, j.a.pan.

It was now impossible for him to retreat back into his cave. Even if he somehow managed to fight his way back in, the fox he'd injured slightly could climb in after him, and then the male and the female would attack, one in front, one in back, and Granddad would be a dead Granddad. He a.n.a.lyzed the situation with lightning speed. If he was willing to risk his life, there was a slim chance he'd survive. The male fox's razor-sharp teeth tore into him, and he could feel them touching bone. Crouching down quickly and letting the pitted cleaver and scissors fall to the valley floor, he grabbed a vine with both hands and, with the male fox clinging to his back, swung out and hung in the air.

Bright red beads of blood oozed from the wounds on the female fox's head. This Granddad saw as he leaped out of the cave. Hot blood from his neck ran onto his shoulders and flowed down to his abdomen and b.u.t.tocks. The fox's teeth seem to be embedded in the fissures of his bones. Bone pain is seven or eight times worse than pain in the muscles; that was a conclusion he'd drawn from his experiences in China. And the teeth of a live animal are more terrible than shrapnel. The pain unleashed by the former is filled with the vibrancy of life; that of the latter is heavy with death. Granddad had hoped to rely on this death-defying leap to fling the male fox off his back, but its unyielding claws shattered those hopes. Like magnets or barbed hooks, they clung to Granddad's shoulders and waist. Its mouth and teeth had fused with his neck. The injured mother fox made things even more difficult for him, since she was not hurt badly enough to fall off the vine. Climbing forward another half meter or so to focus her attack, she bit into his foot. Even though the soles of his feet were so hard and calloused they were not bothered by brambles or thorns, he was, after all, only human, flesh and blood, and her sharp teeth were too much for him. He howled in pain as tears of agony clouded his vision.

Granddad shook himself hard. The foxes shook with him, but their teeth remained clamped into his flesh; if anything, they dug in even deeper. Let go, Granddad! Falling would be better than living like this. But he held the vine in a death grip. Never, in the long life of that vine, had it withstood such force. It creaked and twisted, as if groaning. Its roots were on the gentle slope of the mountain above the cave, where purple flowers were in full bloom amid red and yellow leaves that had fallen from high above. It was there that Granddad had discovered the crisp, sweet, juicy mountain radishes, which he'd added to his menu. It was also there that he'd discovered the serpentine fox path, which he'd followed - using vines to get to the melons - all the way to the foxes' lair, where he'd killed the cubs and flung them out of the cave. Granddad, if you'd known that you'd be suspended in the air, racked with pain, you wouldn't have killed those cubs and taken over the cave, would you? His ashen face was the color of steel. He said nothing.

The vine swung back and forth, sending dirt from above the cave raining down. The sun shone brightly, making the stream on the west side of the cave glisten as it snaked down to the trees in the valley. The village beyond the valley twirled on the beach, on which tens of thousands of ocean waves s.h.i.+mmered and broke, one rolling hard behind the other, never resting. The music of the ocean filtered into Granddad's ears, ten thousand galloping horses one minute, light dancing melodies the next. He clutched his vine tightly, determined not to let go.

The vines sent warnings to man and fox alike; man and fox kept twisting them about. They began to snap angrily. The mouth of the cave slowly rose in the air. Granddad held on for dear life. The precipice moved upward, as the lush, green valley rushed up to meet him. The cool, refres.h.i.+ng air of the forest and the smell of rotting leaves formed a soft cus.h.i.+on that cradled Granddad's belly. The long purple vines danced in the air. He could feel, he could sense, that the fox at his feet had broken loose from her vine, and as she fell she turned a graceful somersault, like a heavenly fire. Ocean waves tumbled onto the beach, curving like a horse's mane.

As he fell, Granddad had no thoughts of dying. He said that after his rope had broken in three attempts at suicide in the forest one year, he knew he would not die. He had a premonition that his final resting place would be back in Northeast Gaomi Towns.h.i.+p, on the other side of the ocean. And since he'd rid himself of the fear of death, falling became a rare opportunity to experience joy. His body seemed to flatten out, his consciousness turning transparently thin. His heart stopped beating, his blood ceased its flow, and the pit of his stomach was slightly red and warm, like a charcoal brazier. Granddad sensed the wind peeling the male fox away from him - first its legs, then its mouth. That mouth seemed to have taken away something from his neck, but it seemed to have left something as well. His burden was abruptly lifted, and Granddad smoothly turned three hundred and sixty degrees in the air. That revolution gave him a chance to look at the male fox and at its pointy, savage face. Its fur was greenish yellow, except for the belly, which was white as snow. Naturally, he could see that it would make a fine pelt, something he could make into a leather vest. The treetops rose faster and faster - paG.o.da-shaped snow pines, birches with white bark, and oaks with yellow leaves fluttering like b.u.t.terflies. He tumbled into their outstretched canopies.

Granddad was still holding on to the spiraling vine for dear life when it caught on a strong but yielding limb of an oak tree. As he hung in the canopy of the tree, he heard the crack of branches snapping. He fell into the crotch of a thick limb and sprang up into the air; again he hit the limb and again he bounced into the air. Finally he came to rest under the vibrating tree, just in time to see the two foxes, first one and then the other, as they thudded into the thick carpet of dead leaves. Like a pair of explosives, the two soft bodies sent rank mud and rotting leaves flying off in all directions. Two dull thuds rustled the dead leaves, the older ones fluttering down to blanket a pair of similarly dead foxes. Gazing down at the brilliantly colored foxes as they were being buried by red and yellow leaves, Granddad suddenly felt his chest expand with heat. A sweet taste filled his mouth, and a red flag slowly unfurled in his skull. Lights went on all around him, and his pain vanished into thin air. His heart overflowed with warm sentiments toward the foxes. The image of them descending gracefully into a bed of red and yellow leaves flowed in and out of his mind. Curtly I said, Granddad, you pa.s.sed out.

The call of a bird awakened Granddad. The scorching noonday sun baked parts of his skin, streams of glorious golden light filtering through gaps between branches and leaves. Light green squirrels leaped nimbly about the tree as they plucked acorns and gnawed at the husks, exposing the white flesh underneath with its subtle bitter aroma. Granddad began to grow aware of his body. His internal organs were all right; his legs were all right. His foot ached, and there were black clots of blood and torn flesh where the female fox had bitten. His neck hurt where the male fox had buried his teeth. Unsure of where his arms were, he searched for them and found them raised high over his head, still grasping the vine that had saved his life. Experience told him that they were dislocated. He straightened up. Dizzy, he stopped looking down. Using his teeth, he pried his fingers off the vine. Then, with his legs and the tree trunk for support, he worked his arms back into their sockets. He heard the pop of bone and felt sweat ooze from his pores. A woodp.e.c.k.e.r was attacking a tree nearby. The pain in his neck returned with a vengeance, as if the woodp.e.c.k.e.r's pointy beak were tapping on one of his white nerves. The cries of birds in the forest could not drown out the sound of ocean waves, and he knew that the ocean was very close. The moment he lowered his head he felt dizzy, and that was the greatest peril in climbing down from the tree. But it would be suicide to stay where he was. His guts were tied in knots, his throat was parched.

Straining to get his nearly useless arms working, he put his legs and belly to work as he began his descent from the tree, forcing his body hard against the trunk. But his efforts were not rewarded, as he tumbled headlong down to the ground. The carpet of rotting leaves cus.h.i.+oned his fall. He'd fallen too short a distance to cause an explosion. The sweet, acrid stench rising up from under him overwhelmed his sense of smell. He got to his feet and, with the sound of water in his ears, began to stumble forward. The stream was hidden beneath the rotting leaves, and as his foot stepped down on them, a coolness rose toward him, and water seeped up from where he had stepped. He lay on his belly and parted the rotting leaves, layer after layer, where the sound of the water was the loudest. It was like peeling away the layers of a flat cake. At first the water was murky; he waited a moment until it cleared. Then he lowered his head to drink, and the cold water rushed past his chest into his stomach; the fetid taste didn't come until later. That brought to my mind the moment during the war when he had lapped up the hot, dirty, tadpole-infested water of the Black Water River.

Once Granddad had drunk his fill, he felt much better and more energetic. All that water staved off his hunger for the time being. He reached up to feel the wound on his neck. It was a pulpy mess, and he recalled the stabbing pain when the fox's teeth snapped off as the animal was ripped away. Gritting his teeth, he probed the wound with his finger. As expected, he found a pair of fangs. Removing them started the flow of blood again, but not much, and he let it flow long enough to cleanse the wound. Then he held his breath and cleared his mind. From the powerful current of myriad forest smells, he picked out the unique, pungent scent of red-leafed loosestrife, and followed it to a spot behind a tall pine tree. I have never found reference to this plant in any ill.u.s.trated encyclopedia of Chinese herbs. Granddad picked some of the herb and chewed it into a paste, which he rubbed on his wounds, one on his neck and another on his foot. To treat his dizziness, he went looking for purple-stalked peppermint. After tearing off a couple of leaves, he kneaded them until juice came out, then stuck them on his temples. Now his wounds no longer hurt. Beneath a chestnut oak tree he ate a few cl.u.s.ters of nonpoisonous mushrooms, and followed that with some sweet mountain leeks. He was in luck, for he also discovered some wild grapes. Once he'd satisfied his hunger, he emptied his bowels and bladder. He had now turned himself back into an energized mountain spirit.

He walked over to look at the foxes beneath an oak tree. Bottleneck flies were already swarming over them. Always afraid of flies, he backed off. Sap flowing from a pine tree gave off a fragrant odor. Bears were sleeping inside the hollows of trees; wolves were nursing their strength in rocky lairs. Granddad knew that he should return to his mountain cave, but he was drawn to the comforting sound of ocean waves and defied his own pattern of staying hidden in the day and going out only at night. Boldly - he was never afraid - he walked toward the sound of the waves.

The ocean sounded very near, but was actually some distance away. Granddad pa.s.sed through the forest, as long and narrow as the valley, and climbed a gently sloping ridge where the trees gradually began to thin out. The ground was dotted with stumps of felled trees. He knew this ridge well, even though until today he had only seen it at night. The colors were different, and so were the smells. Amid the wooded areas were spots where anemic stalks of corn and mung beans had been planted. Granddad squatted down between two rows and ate a few green mung beans, which left a grainy residue on his tongue. He felt serene and unhurried, like a peasant with no concerns. It was a mood he'd experienced only a few times during his fourteen years on the mountain. The time he'd extracted salt from the inlet with his aluminum teapot was one of those. The time he'd stuffed himself with potatoes was another. Each had been a special situation, memorable in its own way.

After eating the mung beans, he walked the last few hundred meters to the top of the ridge, where he looked at the blue waters of the ocean that had drawn him to this spot and at the gray village below the ridge. The seaside was quiet; an old-looking man was turning over the strips of seaweed that lay drying in the sun. The village began to stir, starting with the sound of cattle cries. This was the first time he'd approached the village in the light of day, and he had an un.o.bstructed view of what a j.a.panese village really looked like. Aside from the unusual style of the buildings, it was strikingly similar to farming villages in Northeast Gaomi Towns.h.i.+p. The odd bark of a sick, feeble dog warned him that he mustn't brave going any closer. If he were spotted in the daylight, escape would be difficult, if not impossible. So he hid behind some brambles and watched the village and the ocean for a while. Growing bored, he headed back in a relaxed mood. But then he was reminded of the cleaver and scissors he'd lost in the valley, and panic set in. Without those little treasures, just getting by would be nearly impossible. He quickened his step.

On the ridge he saw a cornfield where the stalks were rustling in wind that sounded very near. He squatted down and hid behind a tree. The field was no larger than a few acres, and the thin, stumpy ears of corn did not look healthy, apparently deprived of both fertilizer and water. Drifting back in time, he detected the smell of burning mugwort. Mosquitoes were buzzing around the edges of the smoke; a cricket in a pear tree chirped shrilly; in the darkness a horse was eating bran mixed with hay; an owl in a graveyard cypress hooted sorrowfully; and the deep, thick night was drenched with dew. Someone coughed in the cornfield. It was a woman. Granddad was startled out of his reveries, excited and afraid.

People were what he feared the most, and also what he missed the most.

In the grip of excitement and fear, he held his breath and focused his eyes, wanting to have a look at the woman in the cornfield. She'd only coughed once, lightly, but he could tell it was a woman. His hearing sharpened and he smelled the scent of a j.a.panese woman.

She finally appeared in the cornfield. Her face was ashen, her large, single-fold eyes gloomy. She had a thin nose and a small, delicate mouth. Granddad felt no malice toward her. She removed her tattered scarf to reveal uncombed brown hair. She was obviously undernourished, just like starving women in China. Granddad's fear was quietly replaced by a sort of pity wholly inappropriate to the situation. She set a basket of corn on the ground and wiped her sweaty brow with her scarf, streaking her ashen face.

She wore a loose, bulky, badly faded yellow jacket, which gave rise to wicked thoughts in Granddad. Thin autumn breezes blew. From the forest came the monotonous tapping of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r. Behind him the ocean was panting. Granddad heard her mutter something in a low, hoa.r.s.e voice. Like most j.a.panese women, her neck and chest were white. Brazenly, she unb.u.t.toned her clothing to allow in the breeze, observed fixedly by Granddad. He saw from her swollen b.r.e.a.s.t.s that she was a nursing mother. When Douguan squirmed as he hung at Grandma's breast, she had spanked his round bottom. Now the spare, stalwart Douguan was sitting high on the back of his steed, holding the reins loosely as he galloped past Tiananmen Gate. The clatter of the horse's iron shoes rang out on the stone-paved avenue, as he and his companions shouted slogans that rocked heaven and earth. He wanted to turn to look at the men standing atop the wall, but strict discipline kept him from doing so. All he could do was catch a glimpse of the great men standing beneath the red lanterns out of the corner of his eye.

She had no reason to cover herself on that bleak, deserted mountain ridge as she urinated. The entire process was aimed straight at Granddad, who felt his blood surge; his wounds throbbed painfully. He stood up in a crouch, mindless of the noise his arms made as they b.u.mped into branches of the tree.

The woman's lackl.u.s.ter gaze suddenly focused, and Granddad watched her mouth open wide. A cry of apparent terror tore from her mouth. Off balance, yet with lightning speed, Granddad rushed toward the woman. How frightening he must have looked.

Not long afterward, he would see his reflection in the clear water of the stream, and realize why the j.a.panese woman had crumpled like a rag doll there in the cornfield.

Granddad laid her down, her body yielding to his positioning. Ripping open her blouse, he saw her heart pounding wildly beneath her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The woman was skin and bones, her body sticky with sweat and filth.

Granddad tore at her, spewing words of foul revenge, one string after another, echoing in his ears: j.a.pan! Little j.a.panese! j.a.p b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! You raped and killed my women, bayoneted my daughter, enslaved my people, slaughtered my troops, trampled on my countrymen, and burned down our houses. The blood debt between us is as great as the ocean. Ha ha. Today your woman has fallen into my hands!

Hatred turned his eyes blood red. His teeth itched. An evil flame hardened him like steel. He slapped her. He tore at her hair and squeezed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He dug his fingers into her flesh. She trembled and moaned, as if talking in her sleep.

Granddad's voice continued to roar in his ears, spewing filth: Why don't you fight? I'm going to rape you, kill you! I'm going to f.u.c.k you to death! An eye for an eye! Are you dead? Even if you are, I won't let go of you!

He ripped off her lower garments, the tattered cloth tearing easily, like cardboard. Granddad told me that when her lower garments fell, the hot blood that had been surging through his body abruptly turned cold, and his body, hard as rifle steel, suddenly went limp, like a rooster that's lost a c.o.c.kfight, hanging its head in defeat, its feathers torn and ragged.

Granddad said he saw a black patch sewn in the crotch of her red underwear, and lost heart.

Granddad, how could a hardened son of China like you be afraid of a patch? Did it violate some taboo of your Iron Society?

My grandson, it wasn't a patch that your granddad feared!

Granddad said that seeing the black patch on the crotch of the woman's red underpants was like being hit in the head with a club.

The j.a.panese woman became an icy corpse. The field of fiery red sorghum from twenty-five years earlier once again surged before him, like a galloping horse. It muddled his vision and flooded his mind. Desolate music resounded deep in his soul, each note a hammer pounding against his heart, and in that sea of blood, in that fiery oven, on that holy sacrificial altar, was Grandma, laid out face-up like a lovely piece of jade, the body of a sweet young girl. Her clothing too had been ripped open to expose the same sort of red underwear, with a similar black patch over the crotch. That time Granddad had not turned limp and weak, and that black patch had become a symbol that was burned into his memory, never to disappear. His tears flowed down to the corners of his mouth, where he tasted a mixture of sweetness and bitterness.

Granddad roughly straightened the woman's clothes with his weary hands. The bruises on her body brought him deep remorse. Staggering to his feet, he started to walk away. His legs were sore and numb. The hot, swollen wound on his neck throbbed, as if engorged with pus. The trees and the mountain peak before him were transformed into a dazzling crimson. Way up high, in the upper reaches of heaven, there in the clouds, Grandma, her chest riddled with bullets, fell slowly into Granddad's outstretched arms. When all her blood had flowed out, her body became as light as a beautiful red b.u.t.terfly. Cupping her in his hands, he walked ahead, down a path opened amid the supple stalks of sorghum. Light from the path streaked skyward; light from the heavens streamed down, fusing heaven and earth. He was standing on the tall embankment of the Black Water River, where yellow weeds grew and white flowers bloomed. The water, the brilliant color of blood, congealed into oil, so bright it was a mirror that reflected the blue sky and white clouds, the dove and the goshawk. Granddad fell headlong into the cornfield on the j.a.panese mountain ridge; it was like falling into a sorghum field in his homeland.

Granddad never actually had intercourse with that woman, so the furry baby described in j.a.panese historical materials, the one she eventually bore, is not related to him. But even having a young uncle who is half j.a.panese and has a body covered with hair would be no disgrace to our family, and could, in fact, be considered our glory. One must honor the truth.

Soaring.

AFTER PAYING RESPECTS TO HEAVEN AND EARTH, HONG Xi, A BIG, swarthy man, could not contain his excitement. His bride's veiled face was hidden from him, but her long, shapely arms and willowy waist revealed that she was more beautiful than most girls in Northern Jiaozhou Towns.h.i.+p. Forty years old, and badly pockmarked, Hong Xi was one of Northeast Gaomi Towns.h.i.+p's most prominent bachelors. His aging mother had recently arranged for him to marry Yanyan in exchange for his sister, Yanghua, one of Northeast Gaomi's true beauties, who was to marry Yanyan's elder brother, a mute. Deeply touched by his sister's sacrifice, Hong Xi thought about her bearing children for the mute, and amid his confused emotions was born a hostility toward his new bride. Mute, if you mess up my little sister, I'll take it out on yours.

It was noon when Hong Xi's new wife entered the bridal chamber. A cl.u.s.ter of prankish children had poked holes in the pink paper window covering to gawk at the bride as she sat on the edge of the brick bed. A neighbor woman patted Hong Xi on the shoulder and giggled, "Pocky, you're a lucky man! That's a tender little lotus bud you've got, so handle it gently."

Hong Xi fidgeted with his trousers and snickered. The marks on his face glowed red.

The sun hung motionless in the sky, as Hong Xi paced back and forth in the yard, waiting for night to fall. His mother hobbled up with her cane and said, "Xi, there's something about my new daughter-in-law that bothers me. Be careful she doesn't run off."

"Don't worry, Mother. With Yanghua over there, this one's not going anywhere. They're like locusts tied together with a string. One can't get away without the other."

While mother and son were talking, the new daughter-in-law walked out into the yard accompanied by two bridesmaids. Hong Xi's mother muttered disapprovingly, "Whoever heard of a bride getting up off the bed before dark to relieve herself? That just shows the marriage won't last. I think she's up to something."

But Hong Xi was too taken with his wife's beauty to share his mother's concern. She had a long face, fine eyebrows, a high nose, and slanted eyes like those of a phoenix. But when she spotted Hong Xi's face, she stopped in her tracks and, after a long quiet moment, let out a screech and took off running. The bridesmaids reached out to grab her by the arms, and rip, tore her red gown to reveal the snowy white skin of her arms, her slender neck, and the front of the red camisole she wore underneath.

Hong Xi was stunned. Rapping him on the head with her cane, his mother shouted, "Go after her, you fool!"

That snapped him out of it, and he staggered after her.

Yanyan flew down the street, trailing her loosened hair like the tail of a bird.

"Stop her!" Hong Xi shouted. "Stop her!"

His shouts brought villagers swarming out of their houses into the street and drew frantic barks from a dozen or more big, ferocious dogs.

Yanyan turned down a lane and headed south into the field, where wheat stalks bent in the wind, their flowered tips dipping like waves in an ocean of green. Yanyan crashed through the waist-high waves of wheat, their green contrasting with her red camisole and milky white arms, a lovely painting in motion.

A bride fleeing from her wedding disgraced all of Northeast Gaomi Towns.h.i.+p. So the village men took up the chase with a vengeance, coming at her from all sides. The dogs, too, which leaped and bounded in the waves of green.

As the human net closed in, Yanyan dove headfirst into the waves of wheat.

Hong Xi breathed a sigh of relief. The pursuers slowed down, breathing heavily; grasping hands, they moved with great care, like fishermen tightening a net.

As anger gripped his heart, all Hong Xi could think about was the beating he'd give her once she was in his grasp.

All of a sudden, a beam of red light rose above the wheat field, startling and confusing the mob below, who fell to the ground. Then they spotted Yanyan, her hands flapping in the air, her legs held together like a gorgeous b.u.t.terfly, as she rose gracefully out of the encirclement.

The people froze like clay statues, gaping as she flapped her arms and hovered above them, then began to fly, slowly enough for them to keep stepping on her shadow if they ran after her. She was only six or seven meters above their heads, but, oh, so graceful, so lovely. Just about every oddity you could think of had occurred in Northeast Gaomi Towns.h.i.+p, but this was the first time a woman had taken to the sky.

Once the shock had pa.s.sed, the people recommenced their pursuit. Some ran home and returned on bicycles to take up the chase of her shadow, waiting for her to land so they could grab her.

The flyer and the people below acted out an engrossing drama of pursuit and capture amid the shouts of people all across the fields. Out-of-towners joined pa.s.sersby in craning their necks to watch the strange event in the sky. The woman in flight was mesmerizingly graceful; her pursuers below, always having to look up as they ran, stumbled through the rutted fields, falling and cras.h.i.+ng into one another like a routed army.

Eventually, Yanyan settled into a grove of pine trees surrounding the old graveyard on the eastern edge of town. The black pines, covering nearly an acre, kept watch over hundreds of mounds under which Northeastern Gaomi ancestors lay. The trees, all very old, stood straight and tall, their tips piercing the low-flying clouds. Together, the old graveyard and the grove of black pines were the towns.h.i.+p's scariest and most sacred spot. Sacred because it was the resting place of the towns.h.i.+p's ancestors; scariest owing to all the ghostly incidents that had occurred there.

Yanyan settled onto the tip of the tallest and oldest pine tree, in the very center of the graveyard. The people below followed her there, then stood and looked up to where she rested lightly on the slender topmost branches of the tree, which easily supported her, even though she must have weighed over a hundred pounds; it was a cause of wonderment to all who were gazing from below.

A dozen or more dogs raised their heads and bayed at the levitating Yanyan.

Hong Xi shouted, "Come down, come down from there this minute."

The dogs' baying and Hong Xi's shouts fell on deaf ears. Yanyan sat there nonchalantly, rising and falling with each pa.s.sing breeze.

The crowd below soon grew weary of standing there helplessly, except for a few rambunctious kids, who shouted, "New bride, hey there, new bride, let's see you fly some more!"

Yanyan raised her arms. Fly, the kids shouted, fly, she's going to fly. But she didn't. Instead, she combed her talonlike fingers through her hair, like a bird preening its feathers.

Hong Xi fell to his knees and wailed, "Uncles, brothers, fellow townspeople, help me find a way to bring her down. You know how hard it was for me to find a wife!"

Just then Hong Xi's mother was led up on a donkey. She slid down off the animal's back, groaning in pain as she stumbled to the ground.

"Where is she?" the old woman asked Hong Xi. "Where is she?"

Hong Xi pointed to the treetop. "She's up there."

Screening her eyes with her hand, the old woman looked up to where her daughter-in-law was nestled atop the tree and screamed, "Demon, she's a demon!"

Iron Mountain, the towns.h.i.+p head, said, "We have to find a way to get her down, demon or not. This has to come to an end, like everything else."

"Elder," the old woman said, "please take charge of this, I beg you."

To which Iron Mountain replied, "Here's what we'll do. First, we send someone to Northern Jiaozhou Towns.h.i.+p to fetch her mother, her brother, and Yanghua. Then if she won't come down, we keep Yanghua here and not let her go back. Next, we send some people home to make bows and arrows and cut some long poles. If nothing else works, we'll bring her down the hard way. And we'll report this to the local government. Since she and Hong Xi are man and wife, the government will surely step in to uphold the marriage laws. Right, then. Hong Xi, you keep watch here under the tree. We'll send someone back with a gong. If anything happens, bang it for all you're worth. The way she's acting, I'm pretty sure she's possessed. We'll have to go back to town and kill a dog so we can have some dog blood at hand when we need it."

The crowd broke up and headed back to make preparations. Hong Xi's mother insisted upon staying with her son, but Iron Mountain was adamant. "Don't be silly. What can you hope to accomplish by staying here? If the situation turns ugly, you'll be caught in the middle. Go on home." Seeing it was pointless to argue, the old woman let herself be boosted up on the donkey's back and left the scene weeping and wailing.

Now that the tumult had died down, Hong Xi, who was known as one of Northeast Gaomi Towns.h.i.+p's bravest souls, found the quiet unsettling. As the sun set in the west, winds swirled and moaned amid the trees. Letting his head droop, Hong Xi ma.s.saged his sore neck and sat down on a nearby stone tablet. He was lighting a cigarette when a sinister laugh floated down from above. His hair stood on end, and he felt chilled all over. Quickly extinguis.h.i.+ng the match, he stood up and backed off several steps to look up at the treetop. "Don't pull any spooky tricks on me. Just wait till I get my hands on you."

With the setting sun as a backdrop, Yanyan's red camisole seemed to be on fire, setting her face aglow, as if gilded. There was no sign that the sinister laughter had come from her. A flock of crows returning to their nests flew past, their gray droppings falling like rain. Several warm blobs landed squarely on his head. Spitting on the ground, he felt that bad luck had befallen him. The treetop was still radiant with light, even though the pine grove was turning black and bats had begun flitting nimbly in and among the trees. Foxes barked in the graveyard. His fears returned.

Spirits were everywhere in the grove, he could feel them; his ears filled with all sorts of sounds. The sinister laughter kept coming, each burst causing him to break out in a cold sweat. Biting the tip of your middle finger was the best way to drive away evil spirits, he recalled, so he did it, and the sharp pain cleared his head. Now he could see that the pine grove wasn't as dark as it had seemed just a moment before. Rows of grave mounds and headstones stood out. He could make out the tree trunks, streaked with dying rays of sunlight. Some young foxes were frolicking amid the grave mounds, watched over by their mother as she crouched in a clump of weeds, every so often acknowledging his presence with a toothy grin. The next time he looked skyward, he saw Yanyan, who hadn't moved, being circled by the crows.

A pale little boy emerged from between two trees, handed him a gong and a mallet, a hatchet, and a large flat cake. The boy told him that Iron Mountain was overseeing the making of bows and arrows, that people had been sent to Northern Jiaozhou, and that the towns.h.i.+p leaders were taking the incident very seriously; they would be sending someone over soon. Hong Xi was to satisfy his hunger with the flat cake and maintain his vigil. He should beat the gong if anything happened.

Once the little boy had left, Hong Xi laid the gong on the memorial stone, shoved the hatchet into his belt, and began devouring the flat cake. As soon as he was finished, he took out the hatchet and shouted, "Are you going to come down or not? If not, I'll chop down this tree."

Not a sound from Yanyan.