The snow market rule was broken.
A single utterance invited disaster.
A green Jeep was parked in the square in front of Taoist Men’s house. Four security police in khaki uniforms with white cotton insignia over the breast pockets piled out and, with nimble precision, burst through Taoist Men’s door; they reappeared moments later with handcuffed Taoist Men in tow. As he was bundled up to the Jeep, he cast a sorrowful look my way, but said nothing. He meekly climbed into the Jeep.
Three months later, the leader of the reactionary sect, Men Shengwu, Taoist Men, who had regularly secreted himself on a high mountain slope to fire signal shots to secret agents, was shot beneath Enchanted Bridge in the county seat. His blind dog ran after the Jeep in the snow, only to have his head blown apart by a sharpshooter riding in the car.
2
I sneezed, and woke myself up. Golden light from the kerosene lamp coated the glistening walls. Mother was sitting beneath the lamp rubbing the golden pelt of a weasel, a pair of shears lying across her knees. The weasel’s bushy tail jumped and leaped in her hand. A grimy, monkey-faced man in a brown army greatcoat sat on a stool in front of the kang. He was scratching the scalp under his gray hair with crippled fingers.
“Is that you, Jintong?” he asked tentatively as a look of pity shone from his black eyes.
“Jintong,” Mother said, “this is your… it’s your elder cousin Sima…”
It was Sima Ting. I hadn’t seen him in years, and just look what those years had done to him! Sima Ting, the township head who had stood atop the watchtower all those years ago, lively and full of energy, where had he gone? And his fingers, red as ripe carrots, where were they?
Back when the mysterious horseman had shattered the heads of Sima Feng and Sima Huang, Sima Ting had jumped out of the horse trough beside the west wing of our house, like a carp leaping out of the water, as the crack of gunfire split his eardrums. He stormed around the mill house like a spooked donkey, circling it over and over. The clatter of horse’s hooves rolled through the lane like a tidal wave. I have to run away, he was thinking. I can’t hang around here waiting to be killed. With wheat husks clinging to his head, he clambered over our low southern wall and landed in a pile of dog shit. As he lay sprawled on the ground, he heard a disturbance somewhere in the lane, and scrambled on his hands and knees over to an old haystack, which he discovered he shared with a laying hen with a bright red comb. The next sounds he heard, only seconds later, were a heavy thud and the crash of a splintering door. Immediately after that, a gang of men in black masks came outside and headed straight for the wall. They trampled the weeds and grass at the base of the wall in their thick-soled cloth shoes. All were armed with black repeater rifles. Moving with the assurance of fearless bandits, they negotiated the wall like a flock of black swallows He wondered why they had covered their faces, but when he later learned of the deaths of Sima Feng and Sima Huang, a glimmer of light filtered into his clouded mind, clearing up things he hadn’t understood until then. The men spilled into the yard. Caring only for his head and letting his rear end take care of itself, he squirmed into the haystack to await the outcome.
“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.