Third Sister came home with the partridges; the meat was for Mother, the broth for my sisters and the little Sima bastard, and the bones for my grandmother, who crunched them up loudly. Third Sister didn’t tell anyone that the outsider had given her the partridges, which were quickly transformed into tasty juices that wound up in my stomach. On a number of occasions, Mother waited until I was asleep to stick one of her nipples into the mouth of the little Sima baby; but he refused it. He preferred to grow up on grasses and bark. Blessed with an astonishing appetite, he swallowed anything that was put into his mouth. “He’s like a donkey,” Mother commented. “He was born to eat grass.” Even the turds that came out of him were like equine droppings. Not only that, Mother believed that he had a pair of ruminating stomachs. We often saw clumps of grass rise up from his stomach into his mouth, then watched as he closed his eyes and chewed contentedly, white foamy bubbles gathering at the corners of his mouth. After he’d chewed for a while, he’d stretch out his neck and swallow it down with a gurgling sound.
Battles between the villagers and outsiders broke out following an attempt by Third Master Fan to ask them politely to leave. The outsiders’ representative – the young man who had given Third Sister the partridges – was called Birdman Han, the bird-catching specialist. With his hands on the slingshots at his waist, he argued vigorously, without giving an inch. He said that Northeast Gaomi had at one time been an unpopulated wasteland, and everyone was an outsider then. So if you can live here, why can’t we? But those were fighting words, and an argument ensued; that soon led to pushing and shoving. One young villager, an impetuous fellow everyone called Consumptive Six, came bursting out from behind Third Master Fan, picked up a steel club, and swung it at the head of Birdman Han’s aging mother. Her skull cracked and, leaking a gray liquid, the old woman died on the spot. Birdman let out a wail that sounded more like that of an injured wolf. Taking his slingshots from his belt, he let two pellets fly, blinding Comsumptive Six where he stood. All hell broke loose then, with the outsiders gradually getting the worst of it. With the body of his mother over his shoulder, Birdman Han retreated, fighting every step of the way,- all the way back to the sandy ridge west of the village. There he laid his mother out on the ground, loaded his slingshot, and took aim at Third Master Fan. “You had better not try to kill us all, headman. Even a rabbit bites when it’s cornered!” Before he’d finished, one of his pellets cut the air with a whoosh and struck Third Master Fan in his left ear. “Since we are all Chinese,” Birdman Han said, “I’ll spare you this time.” Cupping his hand over his split ear, Third Master Fan backed off without a word.
The outsiders threw up dozens of tents on the sandy ridge, making it their own. Birdman Han buried his mother on the sandy ridge, then picked up his slingshots and walked up and down the street twice, cursing in his unfamiliar accent. What he was telling the villagers was this: I am a single man, so if I kill one of you, we’re even, and if I kill two of you, I’ll be one ahead. It is my hope that everyone can live in peace. With Consumptive Six’s blinded eyes and Third
Master Fan’s shattered ear as examples, none of the villagers was willing to take them on. “Just think,” Third Sister said, “he’s lost his own mother, so what else can he fear?”
From that time on, the outsiders and the villagers coexisted peacefully despite the grudges each carried. My third sister and Birdman Han met nearly every day at the spot where he had laid the partridges at her feet. At first, the meetings appeared unplanned, but before long they had turned into outdoor trysts, one waiting for the other, no matter how long it took. Third Sister’s feet trampled the grass in that spot until it stopped growing altogether. As for Birdman Han, he would simply show up, toss birds at her feet, and leave without a word. Sometimes it would be a pair of turtledoves, sometimes a game hen, and once he brought a huge bird that must have weighed thirty pounds. Third Sister was barely able to carry it home on her back; even Third Master Fan, the wisest man around, had no idea what kind of bird it was. All I can say is, I’d never tasted anything quite so delicious in my life. Naturally, the taste came to me indirectly, through my mother’s milk.
Taking advantage of his close relationship with our family, Third Master Fan cautioned Mother to pay heed to what was going on between my third sister and Birdman Han. His words had a demeaning, foul quality. “Young niece, your third daughter and that bird-catcher… ah, it’s a corruption of public morals, and it’s more than the villagers can stand!” Mother said, “She’s just a girl.” To which Third Master Fan replied, “Your daughters are different from other girls their ages.” Mother sent Third Master Fan off with, “You go back and tell those gossips they can to go to hell!”
Reproaching Third Master Fan was one thing, dealing with Third Sister was another: when she came home with a half-dead red-crowned crane, Mother took her aside for a serious talk. “Lingdi,” she said, “we can’t keep eating somebody else’s birds.” “Why not?” Lingdi asked. “For him, shooting down a bird is easier than catching a flea.” “But they’re still his birds, no matter how easily he comes by them. Don’t you know that people expect favors to be returned?” “I’ll repay him one day,” Third Sister said. “Repay him with what?” Mother demanded. “I’ll marry him,” Third Sister said lightly. “Lingdi,” Mother replied somberly, “your two elder sisters have already caused this family to lose more face than anyone could imagine. This time I am not going to give in, no matter what you say.” “Mother,” Lingdi said with rising indignation, “that’s easy for you to say. If not for Birdman Han, could he look like he does today?” She pointed to me, then pointed to the son of the Sima family. “Or him?” Mother looked into my ruddy face and then at the red-cheeked Sima baby, and didn’t know what to say. After a moment, she said, “Lingdi, from today on, we won’t eat any more of his birds, no matter what you say.”
The next day, Third Sister came home with a string of wild pigeons and, displaying her pique, flung them down at Mother’s feet.
The eighth month seemed to arrive out of nowhere. Flocks of wild geese filled the sky heading south and settled on the marshes southwest of the village. The villagers and outsiders all converged on them with hooks and nets and other time-tested methods to reap a wild goose harvest. At first it was a lush yield, and feathers floated above the village streets and lanes. But the wild geese were not to be so easily victimized forever, and they began roosting in the farthest, deepest reaches of the marshes, places even foxes found inhospitable; that cancelled out the villagers’ hunting strategies. And still Third Sister came home every day with a wild goose; some dead, others still alive, and no one knew how Birdman Han managed to catch them.
Faced with cruel realities, Mother was forced to compromise. If we refused to eat the birds Birdman Han caught for us, we’d all have developed signs of malnourishment, like most of the villagers: edema, asthmatic breathing, eyes with flickering light, just like will-o’-the-wisps. Eating Han’s birds meant only that to the list of sons-in-law, which included the leader of a musket band and a specialist in blowing up bridges, was now added an expert bird-catcher.
On the morning of the sixteenth day of the eighth month, Third Sister went to her usual trysting place; at home we awaited her return. By then we were getting a little tired of cooked goose, with its grassy flavor, and were hoping that Birdman Han might present us with a change in diet. We didn’t dare hope that Third Sister would bring home another of those oversized, delicious birds, but a few pigeons or turtledoves or wild ducks wouldn’t be asking too much, would it?