Second Sister jumped up from the carpet and ran after Sima Ku. But she hadn’t gone more than a few steps before he was swept over the ledge, bringing an abrupt end to his curses. Babbitt roared, “Pull the cord on your left! Pull it, stupid!”
We ran over to the ledge, even Eighth Sister, who stumbled in the general direction until First Sister grabbed her. The sheet of silk by then had been transformed into a puffy white cloud, drifting along at an angle, with Sima Ku hanging beneath it, twisting and turning like a fish on a hook.
Babbitt roared, “Steady, stupid, steady! Get yourself ready to touch down!”
The cloud drifted along with the wind, descending slowly until it came to earth on a distant grassy spot, where it was transformed into a dazzling white cover over the green grass.
All that time, we stood on the edge holding our breath, mouths open, as we followed the white sheet with our eyes until it touched the ground; then we closed our mouths and recommenced breathing. But we quickly tensed up as we became aware that Second Sister was crying. It suddenly occurred to me that the commander had fallen to his death. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the patch of white, waiting for a miracle. Which is what we got: the sheet stirred and began to rise; a black object squirmed out from under it and stood up. He waved his arms; his excited shouts reached us on the mountaintop. A roar went up from the ledge.
Babbitt’s face was bright red; the tip of his nose shone, as if smeared with oil. After tying his cords around him and strapping the bundle onto his back, he stood, limbered up his arms, and walked slowly backward. We couldn’t take our eyes off him, but he was oblivious to his surroundings, eyes straight ahead. After he’d backed up a dozen yards or more, he stopped and closed his eyes; his lips were moving, as if he were uttering a charm. The charm completed, he opened his eyes and took off running. When he reached the spot where we were standing, he dove into the air, body straight, and began falling like a stone. For a moment, I was caught up in the illusion that he wasn’t falling, but that the ledge was actually rising, along with the ground below. Then, all of a sudden, a pure white flower, the largest I’d ever seen, blossomed in the blue sky over the green grass. A roar greeted this big white flower as it drifted along, with Babbitt hanging steadily beneath it, like the weight on a scale. He hit the ground in a matter of seconds, right in the middle of our little herd of goats, which fled in all directions, like frightened rabbits. Suddenly, the big white flower collapsed in on itself, like a bubble, covering Babbitt and the shepherdess Niandi.
Sixth Sister shrieked in alarm as a layer of white closed in around her. When her goats fled in all directions, she gazed up into the pink face of Babbitt, as he hung beneath the white cloud. He was smiling. A god descending to the land of mortals! Or so she thought. As if in a trance, she watched him fall rapidly toward her, her heart filling with reverence and ardent love for him.
The rest of us stuck our heads out over the ledge to see what was going on down below. “This has sure been an eye-opener,” said Huang Tianfu, who ran the coffin shop. “A god. I’ve lived seventy years, and I’ve finally seen a god descend to the land of mortals.” Mr. Qin the Second, who taught at the local school, stroked his goatee and sighed. “There was something special about Commander Sima the day he was born. When he was my student, I knew he was headed for big things.” Mr. Qin and Proprietor Huang were surrounded by township elders, all of whom were praising Sima Ku in similar language but different tones of voice and marveling over the eye-popping miracle that had just occurred. “You folks cannot imagine how many ways he differed from the others,” Mr. Qin said loudly to drown out the discussion around him and make a show of his special relationship with Sima Ku, a man who could fly like a bird.
A shrill noise sliced through the air from somewhere beyond the crowd; it sounded a bit like a little whelp crying for the nipple, but even more like the cries of gulls circling boats on the river, which we’d heard many years earlier. Mr. Qin the Second’s laughter stopped abruptly; the look of mirthful pride on his face vanished. We all turned to see where that strange noise had come from. It had, we discovered, come from Third Sister, Lingdi. But little of what made her “Third Sister” remained; when she uttered the strange, shrill noise that sent chills up our spines, she’d transformed almost completely into the Bird Fairy: her nose had hooked into a beak, her eyes had turned yellow, her neck had retreated into her torso, her hair had changed into feathers, and her arms were now wings, which she flapped up and down as she climbed the increasingly steep hillside, shrieking as if alone in the world and heading straight for the precipice. Sima Ting reached out to stop her, but failed, coming away with only a torn piece of cloth. By the time we snapped out of our bewilderment, she was already soaring through the air below the precipice – I prefer the word soaring to plunging. A thin green mist rose from the grass below.
Second Sister was the first to cry. The sound was disturbing. It was perfectly natural for the Bird Fairy to fly off a precipice, so what was she crying about? But then, First Sister, whom I’d always considered sneaky and cynical, began to cry. Inexplicably, even Eighth Sister, who couldn’t see a thing, joined in. Her cries sounded a bit as if she were talking in her sleep and were filled with the passion of someone seeking permission to vent her emotions. One day, long after the event, Eighth Sister confided in me that the crunch of Third Sister hitting the ground sounded to her like the shattering of glass.
The excited crowd was stupefied, faces frosted, eyes glazed. Second Sister signaled a soldier to bring over a mule, which she mounted by grabbing the animal’s short neck and swinging up onto its back. She dug her heels into the mule’s belly, sending it into an uneasy trot. Sima Liang ran after the mule, but was stopped by a soldier before he’d taken more than a couple of steps. The soldier swept him up in his arms and sat him on the horse his father, Sima Ku, had just ridden up on.
Like a routed army, we headed down Reclining Ox Mountain. What were Babbitt and Niandi doing under the white cloud at that moment? As I rode my mule down the mountain path, I racked my brain trying to conjure up an image of Niandi and Babbitt inside the parachute. What I think I saw was: He was kneeling beside her, holding a stalk of bristlegrass in his hand and brushing the velvety tassel against her breasts, just as I had done not long before. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed, whimpering contentedly, like a dog when you rub its belly. See there, its legs rise into the air, its tail swishes back and forth on the ground. She’s doing whatever it takes to please Babbitt! Not long before, she had nearly turned my backside raw because I’d tickled her with a stalk of grass. That thought angered me, and yet there was more to it than just anger. An erotic feeling was there as well, like flames licking at my heart. “Bitch!” I cursed, sticking my hands inside, as if to choke her. Laidi twisted around. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Babbitt,” I muttered, “Babbitt, the American demon Babbitt has covered up Sixth Sister.”
By the time we’d made our slow, winding way down the mountain, Sima Ku and Babbitt had freed themselves from their cords and were standing there, heads bowed, the ground in front of them covered by lush green grass; Third Sister lay heavily in the muddy ground, face-up. Splashes of mud and clods of uprooted grass dotted the area around her. The avian expression had left her face without a trace. Her eyes were open slightly; a sense of tranquillity had settled onto her still smiling face. Cold glints of light emerging from her eyes pierced my chest and went straight to my heart. Her face was ashen, her lips appeared covered with chalk. Threads of blood had seeped from her nostrils, her ears, and the corners of her eyes, and several alarmed red ants were darting across her face.