“Ready to talk?” Inspector Yang asked us. “Come clean, and I’ll take you down at once.”
Straining to lift her head and catch her breath, Mother said rasply, “Let the kids down… I’m the one you want…”
“We’ll make them talk!” he announced to the window. “Beat them, and I mean hard!”
The militiamen picked up their whips and clubs and, with terrifying shouts, began to beat us systematically. I shrieked in pain, and so did First Sister and Mother. Sha Zaohua reacted with stony silence, and had probably passed out. As for Inspector Yang and the district officials, they pounded the table and shouted insults the whole time. Several of the militiamen dragged Sima Ting over to the slaughter rack, where they began beating him on his buttocks with a metal club, each stroke followed by a cry of agony. “Second Brother, you son of a bitch, get over here and confess to your crimes! You can’t beat me like this, not after all I’ve done…” The militiaman swung his club over and over, without a word, as if pounding a piece of rotten meat. One of the officials smacked a leather water bag with his whip, while a second militiaman beat a burlap bag with his whip. Shouts and loud cracks, some real and others not, filled the room with a jumble of noises; the whips and clubs danced in the bright light of the gas lamps.
After about the time it takes for a class to end, they untied the rope fixed to the window lattice, and Mother crumpled to the floor. Then they untied another, and First Sister crumpled to the floor. The rest of us followed. A militiaman carried over a bucket of water and flung cold water on our faces with a ladle, bringing us around immediately. Every joint in my body was numb.
“Tonight has just been a warning!” Inspector Yang bellowed. “I want you to think good and hard. Are you going to talk or aren’t you? If you talk, your previous crimes will be forgiven. If you don’t, then the worst is yet to come.” He picked up his prosthetic limb, put away his pipe, and holstered his pistol, then ordered the militiamen to guard us well before turning and hobbling out the door in the company of his bodyguards, creaking with each step.
The militiamen bolted the door and hunkered down by the wall to smoke, their rifles cradled in their arms. We huddled up next to Mother, whimpering and unable to say a word. She stroked our heads with her puffy hand. Sima Ting was moaning from the pain.
“Hey,” one of the militiamen said, “tell him what he wants to know. Inspector Yang can make a stone statue confess. How many days do you think your flesh-and-blood bodies can hold out? You’ll be lucky to make it past tomorrow.”
One of the others said, “If Sima Ku is the man they say he is, he should give himself up. These days he can hide in the green curtain of crops. But come winter, he’ll be out in the open.”
“That son-in-law of yours is one strange tiger. Late last month, a squad of police had him surrounded in a patch of reeds at White Horse Lake, but he got away and managed to kill seven or eight pursuers with one burst of his machine gun. Even the squad leader was wounded in the leg.”
The militiamen seemed to be hinting at something, I wasn’t sure what. But they had let slip news about Sima Ku: after showing himself at the brick kiln, he had disappeared like a pebble in the ocean. We’d wanted him to fly high and far, but he’d stayed close to Northeast Gaomi, raising chaos and bringing us nothing but trouble. White Horse Lake was just south of Two County Hamlet, no more than three or four miles from Dalan.
8
At noon the next day, Pandi rode up from the county seat. Filled with anger, she was intent on making the district officials pay for what they’d done. But she had calmed down by the time she walked out of the office of the district chief, who came with her to see us. Not having seen her for six months, we didn’t know what she was doing at county headquarters. She’d lost a lot of weight, but the dried milk stains on her blouse showed that she was nursing. We glared at her. “Pandi,” Mother asked, “what have we done wrong?” Pandi looked at the district chief, who was staring out the window. As her eyes filled up with tears, she said, “Mother… be patient… trust the government… the government would never hurt the innocent…”
At the same time that Pandi was trying awkwardly to console us, out in the Scholar Ding family graveyard in the dense pine grove beyond White Horse Lake, Cui Fengxian, a widow from Sandy Mouth Village, was rhythmically pounding the tombstone over the grave of Scholar Ding, with its carved commendation for his heroic deeds. The crisp sounds merged with the du-du-du of a woodpecker at work on a tree. The fanlike white tail feathers of a gray magpie slipped through the sky above the trees. After pounding on the marker for a while, Cui Fengxian sat before the altar to wait. Her face was powdered, her clothes neat and clean; a covered bamboo basket hung from her arm, all of which gave her the appearance of a newly married young woman on a trip to her parents’ home. Sima Ku stepped out from behind the grave marker, causing her to jump back in fright. “You damned ghost!” she cursed. “You scared me half to death.” “Since when is a fox spirit like you afraid of ghosts?” “So that’s how it is,” she said, “still as sharp-tongued as ever.” “What do you mean, that’s how it is? Everything is wonderful, never better.” He added, “Those local turtle-spawn bastards think they’ll capture me, do they? Ha ha, dream on!” He patted the automatic rifle draped across his chest, the chrome-plated German Mauser in his belt, and the Browning pistol in its holster. “My mother-in-law wants me to leave Northeast Gaomi. Why would I want to do that? This is my home, the place where my ancestors are buried. Fm intimate with every blade of grass, every tree and mountain and river. This is where I get my enjoyment, and it also has a flaming fox spirit like you, so, I ask you, why would I want to run away?” Off in the reedy marshes a startled flock of wild ducks took to the air, and Cui Fengxian reached out and clapped her hand over Sima Ku’s mouth. He wrenched her hand away and said, “Nothing to worry about. I've taught the Eighth Route Army a lesson over there. Those ducks were frightened off by vultures.” Cui dragged him farther back into the graveyard, where she said, “I’ve got important news for you.”
They threaded their way through a thicket of brambles on their way into a large vault. “Aiya!” Cui Fengxian yelped as a bramble pricked her finger. Sima Ku slipped his machine gun over his head and lit a lantern, then reached back and grabbed her hand. “Did it break the skin?” he asked. “Let me see.” “It’s fine,” she replied as she tried to pull her hand back. But he’d already stuck the finger in his mouth and was sucking hard. She moaned. “You’re a damned vampire.” Sima Ku spat her finger out, covered her mouth with his, and grabbed hold of her breasts with his large, coarse hands. She writhed passionately and let her basket fall to the ground, sending brown eggs rolling around on the brick floor. Sima Ku picked her up and laid her on top of the broad crypt cover…
Sima Ku lay naked atop the crypt cover, his eyes half closed as he licked the tips of his dirty yellow mustache, which hadn’t been trimmed for a long time. Cui Fengxian was massaging the large knuckles of his hand with her soft fingers. All of a sudden, she laid her burning face against his bony chest, which had the smell of a wild animal, and began to bite him. “You’re a demon,” she said, a note of hopelessness in her voice. “You never come to me when things are going well, but as soon as you’re in trouble, you come and wrap your tentacles around me… I know that any woman who gets tangled up with you is in for a bad time. But I can’t control myself. You wag your tail, and I run after you like some bitch… tell me, you demon, what evil power do you have that makes women follow you, even when they know you’re leading them into a pit of fire, one they’ll jump into with their eyes wide open?”