The beam of light went out and the screen went dark. Pop, a lamp was lit next to the demonic machine. All around me people were gasping and panting. The hall was packed, including a bunch of bare-assed kids sitting on a table in front of me. From where he stood, alongside the machine, Babbitt looked like a celestial fairy in the light of the lamp. The spools of the machine kept turning, and turning. Finally, with a pop, they stopped.
Sima Ku jumped to his feet. “I’ll be goddamned!” he said with a hearty laugh. “Don’t stop now, play it again!”
4
On the fourth night, the movie-viewing was moved to the Sima compound’s spacious threshing floor, where the Sima Battalion – officers and men – and the commanders’ families sat in the seats of honor, village and township bigwigs sat in rows behind them, while ordinary citizens stood wherever they could find room. The large white sheet was hung in front of a lotus-covered pond, behind which the old, infirm, and crippled stood or sat, enjoying their view of the movie from the back, along with the sight of people watching it from the front.
That day was recorded in the annals of Northeast Gaomi Township, and as I think back now, I can see that nothing that day was normal. The weather was stiflingly hot at noon; the sun was black, sending fish belly-up in the river and birds falling out of the sky. A lively young soldier was felled by cholera while digging postholes and hanging the screen, and as he writhed on the ground in excruciating pain, a green liquid poured from his mouth; that was not normal. Dozens of purple snakes with yellow spots formed lines and wriggled their way down the street; that was not normal. White cranes from the marshes landed on soap-bean trees at the entrance to the village, flocks and flocks of them, their sheer weight snapping off branches, white feathers blanketing the trees. Flapping wings, necks like snakes, and stiff legs; that was not normal. Gutsy Zhang, who had gained his nickname owing to his status as the strongest man in the village, tossed a dozen stone rollers from the threshing floor into the pond; that was not normal. In midafternoon, a group of travel-weary strangers showed up. They sat on the bank of the Flood Dragon River to eat flatcakes as thin as paper and chew on radishes. When asked where they’d come from, they said Anyang, and when asked why they’d come, they said for the movies. When asked how they’d learned that movies were being shown here, they said that good news travels faster than the wind; this was not normal. Mother uncharacteristically told us a joke about a foolish son-in-law, and this too was not normal. At sunset, the sky turned radiant with burning colors that kept changing; this too was not normal. The waters of the Flood Dragon River ran blood red, and this too was not normal. As night began to fall, mosquitoes gathered in swarms that floated above the threshing floor like dark clouds, which was not normal. On the surface of the pond, late-blooming lotuses looked like celestial beings beneath the reddening sunset, and this was not normal. My goat’s milk reeked of blood, and that truly was not normal.
Having taken my evening fill of milk, I ran like the wind over to the threshing floor with Sima Liang, drawn irresistibly to the movie, running head-on toward the sunset. We set our sights on the women carrying benches and dragging their children along and the oldsters with canes, since they were the ones we could easily overtake. Xu Xian’er, a blind man with a captivatingly hoarse voice, survived by singing for handouts. He was up ahead walking fast, making his way by tapping the ground in front of him. The proprietor of the cooking oil shop, an aged single-breasted woman known as Old Jin, asked him, “Where are you off to in such a hurry, blind man?” “I’m blind,” he said. “Are you blind too?” An old man called White Face Du, a fisherman wearing his customary palm-bark cape, was carrying a stool made of woven cat-tail. “How do you expect to watch a movie, blind man?” he asked. “White Face,” the blind man replied angrily, “to me you’re a white asshole! How dare you say I’m blind! I close my eyes so I can see through worldly affairs.” Swinging his pole over his head until it whistled in the wind, he came dangerously close to snapping one of White Face Du’s egret-like legs. Du stepped up to the blind man and was about to hit him with his cattail stool, but was stopped just in time by Half Circle Fang, half of whose face had been licked away by a bear one day when he was up on Changbai Mountain gathering ginseng. “Old Du,” he said, “what would people think if you started a fight with a blind man? We all live in the same village. We win some arguments and we lose others, but it’s always a matter of someone’s bowl smashing into someone else’s plate, and that’s how it goes. Up there on Changbai Mountain, it’s no easy matter to run into a fellow villager, so you feel as if you’re with family!” All sorts of people crowded onto the Sima threshing floor. Just listen, all those families at the dinner table talking about Sima Ku’s achievements, while gossipy women gossip about the Shangguan girls. We felt light as a feather, our spirits soared, and all we wanted was for movies to be shown forever.
Sima Liang and I had reserved seats right in front of Babbitt’s machine. Shortly after we sat down and before the colors had finished burning their way across the western sky, a rank, salty smell came to us on the gloomy night winds. Directly in front of us was an empty circle marked off by quicklime. Deaf Han Guo, a crooked-legged villager, was kept busy driving township residents out of the circle with a branch from a parasol tree. His breath reeked of alcohol and bits of scallion clung to his teeth. Glaring with mantislike eyes, he swung his parasol branch mercilessly and knocked a red silk flower right off the head of the cross-eyed little sister of someone called Sleepyhead. Little Gross-eyes had had relations with the quartermaster of every military unit that had ever bivouacked in the village. At the time, she was wearing a satin undershirt given to her by Wang Baihe, the Sima Battalion quartermaster. Her smoky breath came from Quartermaster Wang. With a curse, she bent down and picked up the flower, scooping up a handful of dirt at the same time, which she flung into Deaf Han Guo’s mantislike eyes. The dirt blinded Han Guo, who threw down his parasol branch and frantically spat out a mouthful of dirt as he rubbed his eyes and cursed, “Fuck you, you cross-eyed little whore! Fuck your mother’s daughter!” Big-mouthed Zhao Six, a dealer in steamed bums, said in a soft voice, “Deaf Han Guo, why keep running around like that? Why not just come out and say fuck the cross-eyed little bitch?” The words were barely out of his mouth when a little cypress stool slammed against his shoulder. Aiya! he yelped as he spun around. The assailant was the cross-eyed girl’s brother, Sleepyhead, a skinny, haggard-looking man who parted his hair down the middle, like a scar, leaving tufts hanging down both sides. Dressed in a dusty gray silk shirt, he was quaking. His head was greasy, his eyes blinked nonstop. Sima Liang told me on the sly that the cross-eyed girl and her brother had a thing going. Where had he heard this juicy gossip? “Little Uncle,” he informed me, “my dad says they’re going to shoot Quartermaster Wang tomorrow.” “How about Sleepyhead, are they going to shoot him too?” I asked under my breath. Sleepyhead had called me a bastard once, so I had no use for him. “I’ll go talk to my dad,” Sima Liang said, “and have him shoot that little family rapist too.” “Right,” I agreed, venting my hatred. “Shoot that little family rapist!” Deaf Han Guo, tears streaming from his now nearly useless eyes, was flailing his arms in the air. Zhao Six grabbed the stool out of Sleepyhead’s hands before he could be hit a second time and flung it in the air. “Fuck your sister!” he said bluntly. Sleepyhead, his fingers twisted into claws, grabbed Zhao Six by the throat; Zhao Six grabbed Sleepyhead by the hair, and the two of them grappled all the way over to the empty circle reserved for members of the Sima Battalion, each with a death grip on the other. The cross-eyed girl joined the fray to help her brother, but landed more punches on his back than anywhere. Finally seeing an opening, she slipped around behind Zhao Six, like a bat, reached up between his legs, and grabbed hold of his balls, a move that was met with a roar of approval from Comet Guan, a martial arts expert. “That’s it, a perfect lower peach-pick!” With a scream of pain, Zhao Six let go of his opponent and bent over like a cooked shrimp. His body shrank; his face turned the color of gold in the darkening curtain of night. The cross-eyed girl squeezed with all her might. “Didn’t I hear the word fuck?” she hissed. “Well, I’m waiting!” Zhao Six crumpled to the ground, where he lay, overcome by spasms. Meanwhile, Deaf Han Guo, his face awash in tears, picked up his parasol branch and, like the demon image at the head of a funeral procession, began flailing in all directions, not caring who he hit – wheat or chaff, royalty or commoner alike – wreaking havoc on anyone within striking distance. His branch whistled through the air, as women shrieked and children wailed. Those on the outer edges of the crowd pushed up closer to watch the fun, while those in danger of being hit ran for their lives, heading the other way. Shouts swept the area like a tidal wave, as clumps of people converged, trampling and shoving each other. I watched as the branch struck the cross-eyed girl squarely on her backside, sending her darting into the crowd, where the hands of avenging souls plus a few with no other purpose than to cop a feel found their mark and were met with howls of protest.