Grandma’s piteous wails made the sorghum quake. The bearers stopped rocking the chair and calmed the raging sea. The musicians lowered the instruments from their rousing lips, so that only Grandma’s sobs could be heard, alone with the mournful strains of a single woodwind, whose weeping sounds were more enchanting than any woman’s. Grandma stopped crying at the sound of the woodwind, as though commanded from on high. Her face, suddenly old and desiccated, was pearled with tears. She heard the sound of death in the gentle melancholy of the tune, and smelled its breath; she could see the angel of death, with lips as scarlet as sorghum and a smiling face the colour of golden corn.
The bearers fell silent and their footsteps grew heavy. The sacrificial choking sounds from inside the chair and the woodwind accompaniment had made them restless and uneasy, had set their souls adrift. No longer did it seem like a wedding procession as they negotiated the dirt road; it was more like a funeral procession. My grandfather, the bearer directly in front of Grandma’s foot, felt a strange premonition blazing inside him and illuminating the path his life would take. The sounds of Grandma’s weeping had awakened seeds of affection that had lain dormant deep in his heart.
It was time to rest, so the bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground. Grandma, having cried herself into a daze, didn’t realise that one of her tiny feet was peeking out from beneath the curtain; the sight of that incomparably delicate, lovely thing nearly drove the souls out of the bearers’ bodies. Yu Zhan’ao walked up, leaned over, and gently – very gently – held Grandma’s foot in his hand, as though it were a fledgling whose feathers weren’t yet dry, then eased it back inside the carriage. She was so moved by the gentleness of the deed she could barely keep from throwing back the curtain to see what sort of man this bearer was, with his large, warm, youthful hand.
I’ve always believed that marriages are made in heaven and that people fated to be together are connected by an invisible thread. The act of grasping Grandma’s foot triggered a powerful drive in Yu Zhan’ao to forge a new life for himself, and constituted the turning point in his life – and the turning point in hers as well.
The sedan chair set out again as a trumpet blast rent the air, then drifted off into obscurity. The wind had risen – a northeaster – and clouds were gathering in the sky, blotting out the sun and throwing the carriage into darkness. Grandma could hear the shh-shh of rustling sorghum, one wave close upon another, carrying the sound off into the distance. Thunder rumbled off to the northeast. The bearers quickened their pace. She wondered how much farther it was to the Shan household; like a trussed lamb being led to slaughter, she grew calmer with each step. At home she had hidden a pair of scissors in her bodice, perhaps to use on Shan Bianlang, perhaps to use on herself.
The holdup of Grandma’s sedan chair by a highwayman at Toad Hollow occupies an important place in the saga of my family. Toad Hollow is a large marshy stretch in the vast flatland where the soil is especially fertile, the water especially plentiful, and the sorghum especially dense. A blood-red bolt of lightning streaked across the northeastern sky, and screaming fragments of apricot-yellow sunlight tore through the dense clouds above the dirt road, when Grandma’s sedan chair reached that point. The panting bearers were drenched with sweat as they entered Toad Hollow, over which the air hung heavily. Sorghum plants lining the road shone like ebony, dense and impenetrable; weeds and wildflowers grew in such profusion they seemed to block the road. Everywhere you looked, narrow stems of cornflowers were bosomed by clumps of rank weeds, their purple, blue, pink, and white flowers waving proudly. From deep in the sorghum came the melancholy croaks of toads, the dreary chirps of grasshoppers, and the plaintive howls of foxes. Grandma, still seated in the carriage, felt a sudden breath of cold air that raised tiny goosebumps on her skin. She didn’t know what was happening, even when she heard the shout up ahead:
‘Nobody passes without paying a toll!’
Grandma gasped. What was she feeling? Sadness? Joy? My God, she thought, it’s a man who eats fistcakes!
Northeast Gaomi Township was aswarm with bandits who operated in the sorghum fields like fish in water, forming gangs to rob, pillage, and kidnap, yet balancing their evil deeds with charitable ones. If they were hungry, they snatched two people, keeping one and sending the other into the village to demand flatbreads with eggs and green onions rolled inside. Since they stuffed the rolled flatbreads into their mouths with both fists, they were called ‘fistcakes’.
‘Nobody passes without paying a toll!’ the man bellowed. The bearers stopped in their tracks and stared dumbstruck at the highwayman of medium height who stood in the road, his legs akimbo. He had smeared his face black and was wearing a conical rain hat woven of sorghum stalks and a broad-shouldered rain cape open in front to reveal a black buttoned jacket and a wide leather belt, in which a protruding object was tucked, bundled in red satin. His hand rested on it.
The thought flashed through Grandma’s mind that there was nothing to be afraid of: if death couldn’t frighten her, nothing could. She raised the curtain to get a glimpse of the man who ate fistcakes.
‘Hand over the toll, or I’ll pop you all!’ He patted the red bundle.
The musicians reached into their belts, took out the strings of copper coins Great-Granddad had given them, and tossed these at the man’s feet. The bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground, took out their copper coins, and did the same.
As he dragged the strings of coins into a pile with his foot, his eyes were fixed on Grandma.
‘Get behind the sedan chair, all of you. I’ll pop if you don’t!’ He thumped the object tucked into his belt.
The bearers moved slowly behind the sedan chair. Yu Zhan’ao, bringing up the rear, spun around and glared. A change came over the highwayman’s face, and he gripped the object at his belt tightly. ‘Eyes straight ahead if you want to keep breathing!’
With his hand resting on his belt, he shuffled up to the sedan chair, reached out, and pinched Grandma’s foot. A smile creased her face, and the man pulled his hand away as though it had been scalded.
‘Climb down and come with me!’ he ordered her.
Grandma sat without moving, the smile frozen on her face.
‘Climb down, I said!’
She rose from the seat, stepped grandly onto the pole, and alit in a tuft of cornflowers. Her gaze travelled from the man to the bearers and musicians.
‘Into the sorghum field!’ the highwayman said, his hand still resting on the red-bundled object at his belt.
Grandma stood confidently; lightning crackled in the clouds overhead and shattered her radiant smile into a million shifting shards. The highwayman began pushing her into the sorghum field, his hand never leaving the object at his belt. She stared at Yu Zhan’ao with a feverish look in her eyes.
Yu Zhan’ao approached the highwayman, his thin lips curled resolutely, up at one end and down at the other.
‘Hold it right there!’ the highwayman commanded feebly. ‘I’ll shoot if you take another step!’
Yu Zhan’ao walked calmly up to the man, who began backing up. Green flames seemed to shoot from his eyes, and crystalline beads of sweat scurried down his terrified face. When Yu Zhan’ao had drawn to within three paces of him, a shameful sound burst from his mouth, and he turned and ran. Yu Zhan’ao was on his tail in a flash, kicking him expertly in the rear. He sailed through the air over the cornflowers, thrashing his arms and legs like an innocent babe, until he landed in the sorghum field.
‘Spare me, gentlemen! I’ve got an eighty-year-old mother at home, and this is the only way I can make a living.’ The highwayman skilfully pleaded his case to Yu Zhan’ao, who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him back to the sedan chair, threw him roughly to the ground, and kicked him in his noisy mouth. The man shrieked in pain; blood trickled from his nose.