With a sigh, I turned back to the screen, but saw only fuzzy images. My palms were sweating, cold sweat. Should I let Mother in on the secret I’d discovered in the dark? No, I couldn’t tell her. I hadn’t revealed yesterday’s secret, but she had guessed anyway.
The green bolts of lightning were like molten steel that lit up the sandy ridge occupied by Birdman Han’s men, all its trees and all its huts and mud walls. They were like meandering liquid fingers that stroked the dark trees and the brown houses. Thunder grumbled like vibrating sheet metal covered with rust. The man and woman were rolling around on the grassy riverbank, and I was reminded of what I’d seen the night before.
The night before, Sima Ku had talked Mother and Second Sister into going to the church to watch the movie. During the scene where they were rolling around on the grassy ground, Sima Ku got up quietly and left. I followed him as he hugged the wall, looking more like a thief than a military commander; he must have been a thief at one time. He climbed the low southern wall into our yard, the very path my third brother-in-law, Speechless Sun, had taken; it was also a path the Bird Fairy knew well. I didn’t have to climb the wall, since I knew another way in. Mother had locked the gate and hidden the key between two nearby bricks; I could find it with my eyes closed. But I didn’t need that either, since there was a hole at the bottom of the gate that had been put there for dogs during Shangguan Lü’s time. The dogs were gone; the hole remained. I was small enough to wriggle through, and so were Sima Liang and Sha Zaohua. So now I was inside the gate, in a small room that served as a passageway leading to the western part of the compound. Two steps and I was standing at the gate to the west wing. Everything was where it had always been: millstone, feeding trough for the mules, and Laidi’s grass mat. It was there on that patch of grass that she’d lost her bearings and gone mad. In order to keep her from bursting in on Babbitt’s wedding ceremony, Sima Ku had tied her by the wrist to the window frame and left her there for three days. I assumed that he wanted to liberate First Sister and help open her eyes. So what happened?
Sima Ku’s frame seemed larger than ever in the hazy starlight. He didn’t spot me as he groped his way in, since I was hiding in a corner. I heard a thump shortly after he entered the room – he’d bumped into a metal bucket that we’d put there as a chamber pot for Laidi. She giggled in the dark. A tiny flame lit the room up, and there was Laidi, lying on her straw mat, her hair spread out around her, teeth white as snow; her black robe couldn’t cover her completely. Scary? She was nothing less than a demon. Sima Ku reached out and touched her face; that didn’t frighten her. The cigarette lighter went out. Goats in the pen pawed the ground. Sima Ku’s laughter. He said, “We’re brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and there’s nothing wrong with that, so why not give it a go? I thought you really wanted it. Well, here I am…” Laidi shrieked, a crazed sound that tore through the roof. “It’s pretty much what you said that day – lust, suffering! You’re a wave and I’m a boat. You’re a drought, and I am rain. I’m your savior.” The two of them gyrated together, as if submerged in water, as if clearing out a hollow filled with eels. Laidi’s shrieks were more shrill than the Bird Fairy’s ever were… Without a sound, I wriggled through the dog door and went back into the lane, cold sweat sticking to my body.
The movie was nearing its end when Sima Ku quietly reentered the church. Seeing that it was the commander, the people made room for him to return to his seat. As he walked by, he rubbed my head, and I detected the smell of Laidi’s breasts on his hand. He whispered something to Second Sister once he was in his seat, and she appeared to laugh in response. The lights came on, bringing the viewers up short, as if for a moment they didn’t know where they were. Sima Ku stood up and announced, “Tomorrow night the movie will be shown at the threshing floor. Your commander wants to bring benefits to this area through the introduction of Western culture.” That brought the people back to reality, and the clamor that followed drowned out the sound of the projector. Later, after all the visitors had left, Sima Ku said to Mother, “Well, madam, what do you say? It was worth coming to see, wasn’t it? The next thing I’m going to do is build a movie house for all of Northeast Gaomi. This Babbitt fellow can do just about anything, and you have me to thank for getting him as a son-in-law.” “That’s enough,” Second Sister said. “Let’s take Mother home.” “You can stop wagging your tail,” Mother said. “Nothing good comes of being proud, like dogs eating shit in a crowd.”
Somehow or other, Mother found out what had happened that night with Laidi. The next morning Sima Ku and Second Sister came by with the grain ration, and as they were about to leave, Mother said, “I want to talk to my son-in-law about something.” “Whatever it is,” Second Sister said, “you can say it in front of me.” “You go on,” Mother insisted as she took Sima Ku into the next room. “What do you plan to do with her?” Mother asked him. “Do with who?” “Don’t play dumb with me!” Mother said. “I’m not playing dumb,” he said. “Choose the path you’re going to take,” Mother said. “What paths are you talking about?” Sima Ku asked. “I’ll tell you,” she said. “The first path is to marry her, either as first wife or as second wife or as one of two equal wives. You can work that out with my second daughter. The second is to kill her!” Sima Ku rubbed the sides of his trousers with both hands, although in a different frame of mind from the previous time he’d done the same thing. “I’ll give you three days to make your choice. You can leave now.”
Sixth Sister sat there without moving, as if nothing had happened. I heard Sima Ku cough, a sound that both thrilled and saddened me. On the screen, the man and woman were lying together under a tree, the woman’s head resting on the man’s chest. She was gazing up at the fruit on the tree, while the man was chewing on a blade of grass, lost in thought. The woman pushed herself up into a sitting position and turned to face him, the upper half of her bulbous breasts exposed above her dress. Her cleavage showed up purple, like an eel’s hollow in the shallows of a river. This was the fourth time I’d seen that nest, and I yearned to wriggle into that hollow. But she moved slightly, and the hollow disappeared. She gave the man a shove and growled something at him. But he kept his eyes shut and continued chewing the blade of grass. Eventually, she slapped him and burst into tears. The sound of her crying wasn’t much different than that of Chinese women. The man opened his eyes and spat the pulpy blade of grass into the woman’s face. A strong gust of wind made the tree on the screen sway, sending pieces of fruit bumping against each other. The sound of rustling leaves drifted over from the riverbank, and I couldn’t tell if the wind on the screen was rustling leaves on the river or wind from the river was rustling leaves on the screen. Another bolt of lightning sent a green light through the sky, followed by the rumble of thunder. The wind was picking up, and the viewers began to fidget. A swarm of sparkles flew through the beam of light. “It’s raining,” somebody shouted, just as the man was walking toward the wagon, the barefoot woman on his arm, her dress hanging crooked on her body. Sima Ku stood up abruptly. “Turn it off, that’s it!” he said. “Water will ruin the projector!” He was blocking the light, bringing roars of disapproval from the crowd, so he sat back down. Sprays of water showed up on the screen. The man and woman jumped into the river. Another bolt of lightning snaked through the sky, its crackle hanging in the air for a long time and darkening the beam of light from the projector. A dozen or so black objects flew in, giving the impression that the lightning bolt had sent down a shower of turds. A violent explosion erupted from somewhere in the ranks of Sima Battalion soldiers. A thunderous blast, flashes of green and yellow light, accompanied by the pungent smell of gunpowder at about the same time. I wound up sitting on somebody’s belly, and I felt something hot and wet on my head. I reached up and touched my face; it was sticky. The air was thick with the stench of blood. Screams and shouts erupted from panicky, blinded people. The beam of light shone on undulating backs, bloody heads, terrified faces. The man and woman frolicking in the American river had been blown to bits. Lightning. Thunder. Green blood. Pieces of flesh flying through the air. An American movie. A hand grenade. Golden flames snaking out of the barrel of a gun. Don’t panic, brothers. Another series of explosions. Mother! Son! A living, severed arm. Intestines twisted around a leg. Raindrops bigger than silver coins. Eye-searing light. A night of mystery. “Get down on your stomachs, villagers, and don’t move! Officers and men of the Sima Battalion, don’t move! Lay down your weapons if you want to live! Lay them down or die!” The commands came from all directions, bearing down on us…