With a flick of its tail, the goat walked away casually. Tears gushed from my eyes. My mouth was filled with a muttony taste, and I felt like throwing up. But my mouth was also filled with the taste of buttery grass and daisies, and so I stopped feeling like throwing up. Sixth Sister pulled me to my feet and ran in a circle with me in her arms. I saw freckles pop up all over her face; her eyes were like black stones dredged up from the bottom of a river, clean and bright. “My foolish little brother,” she said excitedly, “this will be your salvation…”
“Mother,” Sixth Sister shouted, “Mother, Jintong drank goat’s milk! He drank goat’s milk!”
The sound of clapping emerged from inside.
Mother tossed the blood-stained rolling pin down next to the wok, opened her mouth wide, and gasped for breath, her chest rising and falling violently. Shangguan Lü lay beside the haystack, a crack in her skull looking like a walnut. Eighth Sister, Yunü, was huddled near the stove, a piece of her ear missing, seemingly gnawed off by a rat, and still oozing blood. The blood stained her cheek and her neck. She was bawling loudly, a steady flow of tears emerging from her sightless eyes.
“Mother, you killed Grandma!” Sixth Sister shrieked in horror.
Mother reached out and touched Grandma’s wound with her fingers, and then, as if given an electric shock, sat down hard on the ground.
2
As specially invited guests, we climbed the southeastern edge of the grassy slope on Reclining Ox Mountain to watch a demonstration by Commander Sima Ku and the young American Babbitt. A southeastern wind swept past under sunny skies as Laidi and I rode a single donkey up the mountain; Zhaodi and Sima Liang shared another one. I sat in front of Laidi, who held me from behind. Zhaodi sat in front of Sima Liang, who merely held on to her clothes, since he couldn’t wrap his arms around her belly, in which the next generation of Simas was growing. Our contingent skirted the ox’s tail and gradually climbed onto the ox’s back, where needle-sharp grass dotted with yellow dandelions grew. Even with us on their backs, the donkeys climbed effortlessly.
Sima Ku and Babbitt rode past us on horseback, excitement showing on their faces. Sima Ku waved a fist at us as he passed. At the crest of the mountain, a group of yellow-skinned people shouted down the mountain. Sima Ku raised his riding crop and smacked the rump of his horse. The horse responded by climbing even faster, with Babbitt’s horse following close behind. He rode horses the same way he rode camels, his upper body straight no matter how much he swayed from side to side. His legs were so long that his stirrups nearly touched the ground, and his horse was both to be pitied and laughed at; but it galloped along nonetheless.
“Let’s speed up a bit,” Second Sister said as she dug her heels into the donkey’s midsection. She was the head of our delegation, the esteemed wife of the commander, and no one dared disobey her. Representatives of the masses and some local celebrities followed without a word of complaint, though they were out of breath from the climb. The donkey carrying Laidi and me was right on the tail of the one carrying Zhaodi and Sima Liang; Laidi’s nipples rubbed against my back through the black cloth of her dress, which took me back to the episode in the feeding trough, and brought me great pleasure.
The wind on the mountaintop was stronger than lower down, so strong in fact that the windsock snapped loudly, its red and yellow silk ribbons dancing wildly, like a pheasant’s tail feathers. A dozen or so soldiers were unloading things from the backs of camels, scowling beasts whose tails and rear leg joints were soiled by dried excrement. The rich pastureland of Northeast Gaomi had fattened up Commander Sima’s horses and donkeys and the locals’ cows and goats, but had had the opposite effect on the dozen or so pitiful camels, who were slow to acclimate to the place; their rumps seemed chiseled by awls, their legs were like kindling; their normally tall and angular humps looked like empty sacks hanging to one side, about to fall to the ground.
The soldiers unrolled an enormous carpet and laid it on the grass. “Lift the commander’s wife down off her donkey!” Sima Ku ordered. Soldiers ran up and lifted the pregnant Zhaodi off her donkey, and then helped Sima Liang down. After that it was the commander’s sister-in-law, Laidi, his brother-in-law, Jintong, and his younger sister-in-law, Yunii. As honored guests, we sat on the carpet. Everyone else stood behind us. The Bird Fairy tried to hide in the crowd, and when Second Sister signaled her to come over, she hid her face behind Sima Ting and stood behind us. Sima Ting, who was suffering from a toothache, stood there covering his swollen cheek with his hand.
The spot where we sat corresponded to the ox’s head, the face directly in front of us. The ox made a point of sticking its mouth up against the chest. Its face was a hanging cliff well over a thousand feet above sea level. Winds swept over our heads on their way to the village, above which misty clouds floated like puffs of smoke. I tried to locate our house, but what I spotted was Sima Ku’s neatly laid-out compound, with its seven entrances. The church bell tower and the wooden watchtower appeared small and fragile. The plain, the river, the lake, and the pastureland were ringed by a dozen or more ponds and populated by a herd of horses the size of goats and donkeys as small as dogs; they were the Sima Battalion mounts. There were six milk goats the size of rabbits, and those were our goats – the big white one was mine. Mother had requested it from Second Sister, who had requested it from her husband’s aide-de-camp, who had sent someone to the Yi-Meng mountain district to buy it. A little girl stood next to my goat; her head looked like a little ball. But I knew it was a young woman, not a little girl, and that her head was actually a lot bigger than a little ball, because it was Sixth Sister, Niandi. She had taken the goats out to pasture, not for their benefit, but because she wanted to see the demonstration too.
Sima Ku and Babbitt had dismounted; their squat horses were roaming around the ox’s head, searching for wild alfalfa, with its purple flowers. Babbitt walked up to the ledge and leaned over to look down, as if gauging its height. Then he looked up into the sky – nothing but blue as far as the eye could see, so no problem there. He squinted and raised a hand, apparently checking the force of the wind, even though the flag was snapping, our clothes billowed, and a hawk was being tossed around in the air like a dead leaf. Sima Ku was behind him, exaggeratedly repeating all his moves. He had the same serious look on his face, but I sensed it was all for show.
‘Okay,” Babbitt said stiffly, “we can begin.”
“Okay,” Sima Ku said in the same tone. “We can begin.”
The soldiers brought up two bundles and opened one of them. Inside was a sheet of white silk that seemed bigger than the sky itself; attached to it were some white cords. Babbitt signaled the soldiers to tie the cords around Sima Ku’s hips and chest. Once that was done, he tugged at them to make sure they were well fastened. He then shook out the white silk and had the soldiers stretch it out as far as it would go. As a gust of wind caught it, the soldiers let go, and it billowed out into a sweeping arc, pulling all the cords taut and dragging Sima Ku along the ground. He tried to stand, but couldn’t, and began rolling along the ground like a newborn donkey. Babbitt ran up behind him and grabbed the cord around his back. “Grab it,” he shouted stiffly, “grab the control cord.” Sima Ku, apparently coming to his senses, cursed, “Babbitt, you fucking assassin -”