“Home… Shangguan Lingdi… I’m… Birdman… Han…”
3
Birdman Han gave me a terrible shock on the day he walked back into our house. I dimly recalled something involving a bird fairy in my past, but that was all about some romantic dealings with the mute, that and the incident where the fairy had jumped off a cliff. But I had no memory of this strange brother-in-law. I glided off to one side to let him out into the yard, just as Laidi, a white sheet around her waist, and naked from there up, ran out into the yard. The mute’s fist tore through the paper window covering, followed by the upper half of his body. “Strip!” he said. “Strip!” Laidi, in tears, stumbled and fell. Her sheet had been stained red by blood from down below. And that is how she appeared in front of Birdman Han – tormented and half-naked, blood dripping down her legs.
Mother returned, with Eighth Sister in tow and driving a goat ahead of them. She didn’t seem overly surprised by First Sister’s unsightly appearance, but the minute she spotted Birdman Han, she crumpled to the ground. It wasn’t until much later that Mother told me she realized at once that he had returned to demand his due, and that we would have to come up with the principal and interest for the birds we’d eaten fifteen years before, before he’d been taken forcibly to Japan, where he’d escaped and led a primitive existence.
The arrival of Birdman Han would bring to an end the wealth and rank we had obtained by sacrificing Mother’s eldest daughter. But that did not stop her from preparing a sumptuous welcoming meal. This strange bird that had dropped from the sky sat trancelike in our yard as he watched Mother and Laidi busy themselves at the stove. Moved by Birdman’s unusual tale of fifteen years hiding out in Japan, Laidi temporarily forgot her suffering at the hands of the mute, who maneuvered himself out into the yard and looked Birdman over provocatively.
At the table, Birdman handled his chopsticks so awkwardly he couldn’t pick up a single piece of meat. So Mother took them from him and urged him to eat with his hands. He raised his head. “She… my… wife?” Mother cast a hateful glance at the mute, who was gnawing on a chicken head. “She,” Mother said, “has gone far away.”
Mother’s kind nature would not allow her to refuse Birdman’s request to live with us, not to mention the urgings of the district chief and the head of the Civil Administration: “He has no place else to go, and it’s up to us to satisfy the needs of someone who has returned to us from Hell. Not only that…” “You don’t need to say any more,” Mother interrupted. “Just send over some people to help us put the side room in order for him.”
And with that, Birdman Han moved into the two rooms in which the Bird Fairy had once lived. Mother reached up into the dusty rafters and took down the insect-scarred drawing of the Bird Fairy and hung it on the northern wall. When Birdman saw the drawing, he said, “I know who killed my wife, and one of these days Fll get my revenge.”
The extraordinary love affair between First Sister and Birdman Han was like a marshland opium poppy – toxic yet wildly beautiful. That afternoon, the mute went off to the co-op to buy some liquor. While First Sister washed a pair of underwear beneath the peach tree, Mother sat on the kang making a duster out of the feathers of a rooster. She heard a noise at the door and saw Birdman Han, who was once again hunting birds, walk lightly into the yard, a beautiful little bird perched on one of his fingers. He went up to the peach tree and stared down at Laidi’s neck. The bird chirped fetchingly, making its feathers tremble. The swirling chirps incited the fine hairs of her passion. Deep-seated feelings of remorse settled in Mother’s heart. That bird was nothing less than the incarnation of Birdman Han’s pain and suffering. She watched as Laidi raised her head and gazed at the bird’s beautiful blood-red chest and black, heartbreaking eyes, no bigger than sesame seeds. Mother saw Laidi’s cheeks redden and her eyes grow wet, and she knew that the bird’s passionate cries were raising the curtain on the one thing she’d worried about. But she was powerless to stop it from happening, for she knew that when the emotions of a Shangguan girl were stirred, not even a herd of horses could alter the course of events. In the grip of despair, she squeezed her eyes shut.
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.