The mute reached up and rubbed his face, then raised his hand to his eyes to see if anything was stuck to his fingers. That went on for a moment before he put his fingers up to his nose and sniffed them to see if he could detect any special odor. He then stuck his tongue out and licked his fingers to see if there was any special taste. That was followed by a series of grunts as he reached out and shoved Mother, who settled weightlessly to the ground. We threw ourselves on top of her, crying the whole time.
The mute picked us up, one at a time, and flung us out of the way. I landed on the back of some woman; Sha Zaohua landed on my belly. Lu Shengli landed on the back of an old man; Eighth Sister landed on the shoulder of an older woman. Big Mute was hanging from his father’s arm, and no amount of shaking could loosen his grip. He bit his father on the wrist. Little Mute had his arms wrapped around his father’s leg and was gnawing on his bony knee. With one kick, the mute sent that son head over heels, right into the head of a middle-aged man. Then he swung his arm with all his might, sending Big Mute flying into the lap of an old woman, a chunk of his father’s flesh in his teeth.
Picking up Sima Feng in his left hand and Sima Huang in his right, he strode off, taking high steps, as if walking through mud. W7hen he reached the front of the stage, he flung the two girls up onto it, one after the other. They both screamed for their grandmother and jumped down off the stage, only to be caught by the mute, who tossed them back up. By then, Mother had struggled to her feet and was staggering toward the stage; she fell before she’d taken more than a couple of steps.
Lu Liren stopped pacing and said dismally, “All you poor peasants, I ask you, am I or am I not a man? Can you not imagine how I feel about having to shoot these two little girls? My heart aches. They’re only children, after all, and relatives of mine to boot. But for that very reason, I have no choice but to swallow my tears and sentence them to death. Gome out of your stupor, my friends. By executing Sima Ku’s children, we avoid taking the wrong path. On the surface, we’ll be executing two children. And yet it’s not children we’ll be executing, but a reactionary, backward social system. We will be executing two symbols! Rise up, friends. You’re either revolutionary or counterrevolutionary, there’s no middle ground!” He was shouting so loudly he was overcome by a coughing fit. His face paled and tears gushed from his eyes. A county official stepped up and began thumping him on the back, but Lu waved him off. Once he’d caught his breath, he bent over and spat out a gob of mucus. Sounding like a man suffering from consumption, he managed to gasp, “Carry out the sentence!’
The mute hopped up onto the stage, grabbed the two girls, and carried them over to the pond, where he dropped them to the ground and backed up ten or fifteen paces. The girls wrapped their arms around each other; their long, thin faces seemed coated with gold powder. They looked at the mute with terror in their eyes as he took out his pistol and raised it heavily. His wrist bled and his hand shook from the exertion of raising the pistol, as if it weighed twenty pounds. Then – pow – a shot rang out. His hand jerked up from the recoil as blue smoke spewed from the muzzle; then his arm dropped weakly. The bullet passed over the girls’ heads and thudded into the ground in front of the pond, sending mud flying.
A woman came sailing down the weedy path along the base of the dike, a sloop in the wind, clucking loudly like a mother hen driving her brood of chicks ahead of her. The moment she appeared beneath the dike, I saw it was First Sister, who had been excused from the meeting on the basis of being mentally disturbed. As the widow of the traitor Sha Yueliang, she should have been high on the list of those to be executed, and if people had known about her one-night stand with Sima Ku, she’d have been shot twice. Seeing her throw herself into the net had me worried sick, but she ran up to the pond and planted herself in front of the two girls. “Kill me,” she shouted like a madwoman, “kill me! I slept with Sima Ku, and I am their mother!”
The mute’s chin twitched again, a sure sign that troubling waves were billowing in his heart. He raised his pistol and said gloomily, “Strip – strip – strip -”
Without a second thought, First Sister undid the buttons of her blouse and exposed her perfect breasts. The mute stared straight ahead, his eyes snapping into place; his chin twitched so violently it seemed about to fall off. Cupping his hand under his chin to keep it in place, he opened his mouth and sputtered, “Strip – strip – strip!” First Sister obediently removed her blouse; she was naked from the waist up. Her face was dark, but her body glistened like fine porcelain. On that gloomy morning, she stripped to the waist and engaged the mute in a battle of wills. He walked up to her on bowed legs, looking like a baked snowman, crumbling piece by piece – first an arm, then a leg, intestines coiling on the ground like a snake; a red heart beating in his cupped hands. All those scattered parts came back together with great difficulty when he knelt at First Sister’s feet and wrapped his arms around her waist. His big head rested against her belly.
Lu Liren and the others were stunned to witness this remarkable change, their mouths agape, as if filled with hot, sticky sweets. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking as they observed the scene beside the pond.
“Speechless Sun!” Lu Liren called out weakly, but the mighty Speechless Sun ignored him.
Pandi jumped down off the stage and ran to the pond, where she picked the jacket up off the ground and draped it around First Sister. She had hoped to drag First Sister away, but the lower half of First Sister’s body had already merged with the mute, and how could Pandi pull her away from that? So she picked up the mute’s pistol and hit him on the shoulder. He looked up at her; his eyes were awash with tears.
What happened then remains a puzzle even now. At the moment when Pandi was facing the tear-washed, trancelike face of the mute; at the moment when Sima Feng and Sima Huang stood up hand in hand, still terrified, and began looking around for their grandmother; at the moment when Mother came to her senses and began muttering as she ran toward the pond; at the moment when Xu Xian’er rediscovered his conscience and said, County Head, don’t kill them – my mother didn’t hang herself, and Sima Ku isn’t the only one responsible for the death of my wife; at the moment when a pair of dogs got into a fight in the ruins behind the house of the Muslim woman; at the moment when the sweet recollection of the game I played with Laidi in the horse trough came to me, and my mouth filled with the taste of ashes and the fragrance of elasticity of her nipple; at the moment when everyone was trying to guess where the VIP had come from and where he’d gone; at that moment two men on horseback rode in from the southeast like a whirlwind. One of the horses was white as snow, the other black as charcoal. The rider on the white horse was all in black, including a black bandanna covering the lower half of his face and a black hat. The man on the black horse was all in white, including a white bandanna covering the lower half of his face and a white hat. Both carried a pair of pistols. They were expert horsemen; they leaned slightly forward, legs hanging straight down. As they approached the pond they fired several shots in the air, so frightening the armed soldiers, not to mention the county and district officials, that they all threw themselves to the ground, facedown. The two riders whipped their horses as they circled the pond, their mounts leaning to form beautiful arcs. Then each fired another shot before whipping their mounts again and riding off, the horses’ tails fluttering in the air behind them. They vanished in front of our eyes, truly a case of coming on the winds of spring and leaving on the winds of autumn. They seemed like an illusion, though they were real enough. Slowly we regained our composure, and when we looked down we saw Sima Feng and Sima Huang laid out beside the pond, each with a bullet hole between the eyes. Everyone was paralyzed with fear.