By then my third and fourth sisters were muttering, voicing discontent over their elder sister as gusts of wind from the north swept across the riverbed and sliced into their faces like knives. Second Sister stood up, spit in her hands, picked up the sledgehammer again, and brought it down on the ice. But the next swing sent her sprawling on the ice a second time.
Just as they were gathering up the bucket and carrying pole and were about to head home dejected, resigned to the fact that they would have to continue using melted snow or ice to cook, a dozen or so horses pulling sleighs and leaving trails of icy mist galloped up on the frozen river. Owing to the bright rays of sunlight glancing off the ice and the fact that the horsemen rode in from the southeast, at first Second Sister thought they had coasted down to earth on those very rays of sunlight. They shone like golden sunbeams and were lightning quick. The horses’ hooves flashed like silver as they pummeled the ice, iron horseshoes filling the air with loud cracks and sending shards of ice flying into the faces of my sisters, who stood there gaping, too stupefied to even think about running away. The horses skirted them at a gallop before coming to a staggering halt on the slick ice. My sisters noticed that the sleighs were coated with thick yellow tung oil that shone like stained glass. Four men sat in each sleigh, all wearing hats made of fluffy fox fur. White frost coated their beards, their eyebrows, their eyelashes, and the fronts of their hats. Dense puffs of steamy mist emerged from their mouths and nostrils. Their horses were small and delicate, their legs covered with long hair. From their calm attitude, Second Sister guessed that they were legendary Mongol ponies. A tall, husky fellow jumped down off the second sleigh. He was wearing a sleek lambskin coat, open in front to reveal a leopardskin vest. The vest was girded by a wide leather belt, from which a holstered revolver hung on one side and a hatchet on the other. He alone was wearing a felt hat with flaps instead of a leather cap. Rabbit fur earmuffs covered his exposed ears. “Are you the daughters of the Shangguan family?” he asked.
The man standing before them was Sima Ku, assistant steward of Felicity Manor. “What are you doing out here?” He supplied his own answer before they could reply. “Ah, trying to break a hole in the ice. That’s no job for girls!” He turned and shouted to the men in the sleighs, “Climb down off there, all of you, and help my neighbors chop a hole in the ice. We’ll water these Mongol ponies while we’re at it.”
Dozens of bloated-looking men climbed down off the sleighs, coughing and spitting. Several of them knelt down, took out hatchets, and attacked the ice – pa pa. Splinters flew as cracks opened up. One of the men, whose face sported whiskers, felt the edge of his hatchet and, after blowing his nose, said, “Brother Sima, at this rate, we could work till it was dark and not break through the ice.” Sima Ku knelt down, took out his own hatchet, and attempted a few tentative whacks on the ice. “Damn!” he cursed. “It’s like steel plate.” The whiskered man said, “Elder brother, if we all empty our bladders on one spot, it’ll melt open a hole.” “You dumb prick!” Sima Ku cursed just as exhilaration swept over him. He smacked himself on his rear end – his lips cracked open, for the wound in his backside hadn’t yet completely healed – and said, “I’ve got it. Technician Jiang, come over here.” A bony little man walked up and looked into Sima Ku’s face, not saying a word. But his expression made it clear that he was waiting for orders. “Can that thing you’ve got cut through ice?” Jiang grinned contemptuously and said in a squeaky, ladylike voice, “Like smashing an egg with an iron hammer.”
“Hurry up, then,” Sima Ku said excitedly, “and give me sixty-four – that’s eight times eight – holes in this river of ice. Let my fellow villagers benefit from the presence of Sima Ku.” He turned to my sisters. “You girls stay put.”
Technician Jiang pulled back the canvas tarp covering the third sleigh, revealing two iron objects, painted green, in the shape of enormous artillery shells. With practiced movements, he freed a long plastic tube and wrapped it around the head of one of the objects. Then he looked at the round clock face; two pencil-thin red hands were ticking rhythmically. Finally, he put on a pair of canvas gloves, clicked a metal object that looked like a big opium pipe, attached to two rubber tubes, and gave it a twist. The thing sputtered into life. The technician’s helper, a skinny boy who could not have been more than fifteen, lit a match and touched it to the sputtering ends of the tubes. Blue flames the thickness of silkworm chrysalises shot out with a loud whoosh. He shouted an order to the youngster, who climbed onto the sleigh and twisted the heads of the two objects, quickly turning the blue flames blindingly white, brighter than sunlight. Technician Jiang picked up one of the intimidating objects and looked over at Sima Ku, who squinted as he raised his hand high, then sliced it down. “Start cutting!” he shouted.
Jiang bent over at the waist and aimed the white flame at the frozen surface. Milky white steam jetted a foot or more into the air, accompanied by loud sizzles. His arm controlled the action of his wrist; his wrist controlled the direction of the enormous opium pipe; and the opium pipe spat out white flames that burned a hole in the ice. He looked up. “There’s your hole,” he announced.
Somewhat doubtfully, Sima Ku bent down to look at the ice, and, sure enough, a chunk of ice the size of a millstone, surrounded by little chips, had been burned out of the surface, with river water swirling around it. Jiang then burned a cross in the chunk of ice with the white flame, dividing it into four pieces. When he stepped down on the detached pieces, each was carried away by the river below. Blue water gushed up from the neat hole.
“Neat,” Sima Ku praised the man, who was also the beneficiary of congratulatory looks from the men standing around him. “Now make some more holes for us,” Sima ordered.
Putting all his skills to work, Technician Jiang burned dozens of holes in the two-foot-thick ice covering the Flood Dragon River. They emerged in a variety of shapes: circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, trapezoids, octagons, and pear-blossom, all laid out like a page in a geometry textbook.
“Technician Jiang,” Sima Ku said, “you’ve tasted success! All right, men, back up on the sleds. We need to reach the bridge before dark. But first we’ll water the horses from the Flood Dragon River!”
The men led their horses up to the holes to drink from the river, as Sima Ku turned to Second Sister. “You’re the second daughter, aren’t you? Well, go home and tell your mother that one of these days I’m going to crush that donkey bastard Sha Yueliang and return your elder sister to the mute.”
“Do you know where she is?” my sister asked boldly.
“Sha Yueliang took her with him to sell opium. Him and that donkey-shit band of his.”
Not daring to ask any more, Second Sister watched as Sima Ku climbed up on his sled and headed off toward the west at full speed, followed by the other eleven sleds. They made a turn at the stone bridge over the Flood Dragon River and shot out of sight.
My sisters, still immersed in the miraculous sight they had just witnessed, no longer felt the cold. They stared at all the holes in the ice, from triangles to ovals, from ovals to squares, and from squares to rectangles… as the river water soaked their shoes and quickly turned to ice. The fresh air rising out of the holes filled their lungs. Feelings of reverence for Sima Ku washed over my second, third, and fourth sisters. Now that my eldest sister had served as a glorious model, a thought began to form in Second Sister’s immature brain – she would marry Sima Ku! But someone, it seemed, had warned her coldly that Sima Ku had three wives. All right, then, she thought, I’ll be his fourth! Just then Fourth Sister shouted: “Sister, a big meat stick!”