“I’ll go first and move the sheet metal out of the way,” he said as he patted me on the shoulder to show he had everything under control. “Give me a boost.” He wrapped his arms around the slippery pole, jumped up, and rested his feet on my shoulders. “Stand up,” he urged, “stand up!” With my arms around the pole, I stood up, my legs shaking. Rats clinging to the pole squeaked as they jumped to the floor. I felt him press down with his feet as he plastered himself up against the pole like a gecko. In the muted light seeping in, I watched him shinny up the pole, slipping back every once in a while, until he finally made it to the top.
There he hit the sheet metal with his fist, making loud clangs and letting more rainwater in. It landed on my face, some of it entering my mouth and leaving the bitter taste of rust, not to mention tiny metal filings. He was breathing hard in the dark and grunting from exertion. I heard the sheet metal shift as a cascade of water hit me, and I held tightly to the pole to keep from being swept off the millstone. Sima Liang pushed with his head to make the hole bigger. It strained for a moment before giving way, and a raggedy triangle opened up in the roof, through which beams of gray starlight streamed. Amid the stars in the sky, I spotted several that hardly shone at all. “Little Uncle,” he said from beyond the rafters, “wait there while I take a look around. Then I’ll come down and help you up.” With an upward surge, he stuck his head up through the new skylight to look around.
“Somebody’s on the roof!” a soldier at the gate shouted. Bright tongues of light split the darkness as bullets ricocheted off the sheet metal with loud pings. Sima Liang slid down the pole so fast he nearly flattened me. He wiped the water from his face and spat out a mouthful of metal filings. His teeth were chattering. “It’s freezing up there!”
The deep darkness just before dawn had passed, and the inside of the mill house began to turn light. Sima Liang and I were huddled together; I could feel his heart beating fast against my ribs, like a feverish sparrow. I was weeping out of despair. Brushing my chin with the top of his nice, round head, he said, “Don’t cry, Little Uncle, they won’t dare hurt you. Your fifth brother-in-law is their superior officer.”
There was now enough light to get a good look at our surroundings. The twelve enormous millstones, one of which Sima Liang and I occupied, shimmered majestically. His uncle, Sima Ting, occupied another. Water dripped from the tip of his nose as he winked at us. Wet rats covered the tops of the other millstones, huddled together, their beady little eyes a glossy black, their tails like worms. They looked pitiful and loathsome at the same time. Water puddled on the floor and dripped in through the roof. The soldiers of the Sima Battalion stood in tight little groups, their green uniforms, now black, sticking to their bodies. The looks in their eyes and the expressions on their faces were terrifyingly similar to those on the rats. For the most part, the civilian prisoners were off by themselves, only a few choosing to mix with the soldiers, like the occasional stalk of wheat in a cornfield. There were more men than women, some of whom held whimpering children in their arms. The women sat on the floor; most of the men were on their haunches, except for a few who leaned against the walls. Those walls had been whitewashed at one time, but now that they were wet, the plaster rubbed off on the men’s backs, changing their color. I spotted the cross-eyed girl in the crowd. She was sitting in the mud with her legs out in front, leaning against another woman. Her head was lolling against her shoulder, as if her neck were broken. Old Jin, the woman with one breast, was sitting on the buttocks of a man. Who was he? He was sprawled in the water, facedown, white whiskers floating on the surface, clots of black blood shifting in the water around them like little tadpoles. Only Old Jin’s right breast ever developed; the left side of her chest was flat as a whetstone, which made the one breast seem to stick up higher than normal, like a lonely hill on the plains. The nipple was big and hard, nearly bursting through her thin blouse. People called her “Oilcan,” since they said that whenever her nipple was aroused, you could hang an oilcan from it. Decades later, when I finally had the chance to lie atop her naked body, I noticed that the only sign of a breast on her left side was a little nipple the size of a bean, like a mole announcing its existence. She was sitting on the dead man’s buttocks, rubbing her face, as if deranged; she’d rub her face, and then rub her hands on her knees, as if she had just crawled out of a spider hole and was tearing translucent cobwebs off her face. The other people were in a variety of postures and attitudes. Some were crying, others were laughing, while still others were mumbling with their eyes shut. One woman was rocking her head back and forth, like a water snake or a crane at water’s edge. Married to Geng Da’le, the shrimp paste seller, she had a long neck and a small head, much too small for her body. People said she was a transformed snake, and her head sure looked like it. It stuck up out of a group of women whose heads all hung forward, and in the dank coldness of the mill house, with its muted light, the way her head swayed back and forth was all the proof I needed that she’d once been a snake and was now turning back into one. I didn’t have the nerve to go take a look at her body, but even when I forced myself to look away, her image stayed with me.
A lemon-colored snake slithered down one of the China fir poles. It had a flat head like a spatula and a purple tongue that kept darting in and out of its mouth. Each time its head touched the top of the millstone, it went limp, turned a right angle, and slithered off in a new direction, heading straight for rats in the center of the millstone. The rats raised their claws amid a frenzy of squeaks. As the snake’s head moved in a straight line, its thick body slithered smoothly down the pole, uncoiling as it went, as if the pole and not the snake were turning. When it reached the center of the millstone, the head abruptly rose at least a foot into the air and leaned backward, like a hand. The spot behind its head contorted, flattened out and widened, displaying a latticework pattern. The movement of the purple tongue quickened, a horrifying sight accompanied by a bone-chilling hiss. The rats made themselves as small as possible, squeaking all the while. One large rat stood up on its hind legs and bared its claws, like holding a book, then shifted its rear legs before leaping into the air, straight into the triangular opening of the snake’s mouth. The snake closed its mouth, leaving the back half of the rat sticking out straight, its rigid tail still waving comically.