They dragged Big Tooth Yu up to the edge of the inlet and stood him there, then looked at Mute, who unslung his rifle and cocked it; a bullet snapped into the chamber.
Big Tooth Yu turned to face Mute and smiled. To Father’s eyes, it was a kindly, heartfelt smile, like the miserable dying rays of a setting sun.
‘Untie me, Mute. I shouldn’t die all trussed up!’
Mute thought for a moment before walking up, rifle in hand, taking his knife from his waistband, and deftly cutting the ropes. Big Tooth Yu massaged his arms, then made a quarter-turn and shouted, ‘Shoot, Mute. Aim for my temple. Don’t make me suffer!’
To Father’s mind, a man at the point of death suddenly commands the respect of all other men. Big Tooth Yu was, after all, the seed of Northeast Gaomi Township. He had committed a grave offence that even death would not expiate, yet, as he prepared to die, he displayed the airs of a true hero; Father was so moved at that moment that he felt like leaping in the air.
Big Tooth Yu gazed down at the stagnant water, where green lotus leaves and a sole white blossom floated; his gaze then took in the shimmering stalks of sorghum on the opposite bank. In a loud voice he broke into song: ‘The sorghum is red, the sorghum is red, the Japs are coming, the Japs are coming. The nation is lost, our families scattered…’
Mute raised his rifle, then lowered it, raised it and lowered it.
‘Mute,’ the soldiers pleaded, ‘talk to Commander Yu. Let him go!’
Gripping his rifle tightly, Mute listened to Big Tooth Yu butcher the song.
Big Tooth Yu turned back, his eyes wide with anger, and screamed, ‘Go ahead and shoot! You’re not going to make me do it myself, are you?’
Raising his rifle one last time, Mute took aim at Big Tooth Yu’s tilelike forehead and pulled the trigger.
Father saw Big Tooth Yu’s forehead explode into fragments even before the dull crack of rifle fire reached his ears. Mute stood with bowed head, the echo of the shot still hanging in the air, wisps of white smoke rising from the muzzle of his rifle. Big Tooth Yu’s body froze for a second before plummeting into the water below like a felled tree.
Mute walked off, dragging his rifle behind him, followed by the two soldiers.
Father and a bunch of other kids crept timidly over to the inlet, where they could look down at Big Tooth Yu, whose body lay face up in the mud. All that was left of his face was the perfectly formed mouth. The fluids of his brain had oozed into his ears from the shattered scalp, and one of his eyeballs hung from the socket like a huge grape on his cheek. The white lotus blossom, its stem broken and trailing several white threads, lay next to his hand. Father could smell its perfume.
Now that it was over, Adjutant Ren brought up a cypress coffin with a thick layer of varnish and a yellow satin lining, into which he placed the neatly dressed body; following a proper funeral ceremony, Big Tooth Yu was buried beneath the little willow tree. Adjutant Ren wore his dapper black uniform to the funeral and had his hair slicked down neatly. A strip of red silk was wrapped around his left arm. Commander Yu, in hempen mourning clothes, wailed loudly, and as the procession left the village, he smashed a brand-new ceramic bowl against a brick.
Grandma made a set of white mourning clothes for Father – she wore sackcloth. Father, fresh willow switch in hand as he walked behind Commander Yu and Grandma, witnessed the smashing of the ceramic bowl against the brick, and was reminded of Big Tooth Yu’s splintered forehead. He had a vague inkling that the two events were somehow linked. The collision of one event with another always produces a third inevitability.
Father looked on dispassionately, without shedding a tear, as the procession formed a ring around the willow tree, and sixteen robust young men slowly lowered the coffin into the yawning grave with eight thick ropes. Commander Yu scooped up a handful of dirt and flung it down on the glossy coffin lid. The thud resounded in everyone’s heart. The men began shovelling dirt into the grave, drawing angry rumbles from the coffin as it slowly disappeared into the black soil, which rose higher and higher, until it filled the grave, then formed a mound like a steamed bun. Commander Yu fired three shots into the air above the willow tree, the bullets tearing through the crown of the tree, one after another, to shear off yellow leaves like fine eyebrows, which fluttered in the air. Three shiny casings leaped into the putrid water of the inlet, and were immediately retrieved by a boy who jumped down, his feet squishing in the soft green mud. Adjutant Ren took out his Browning and pulled off three shots, which shrieked like roosters as they sped above the sorghum. Commander Yu and Adjutant Ren faced each other, smoking guns in their hands. Adjutant Ren nodded. ‘He did himself proud!’ He stuck his pistol into his belt and strode into the village.
Father watched Commander Yu slowly raise his weapon and aim it at Adjutant Ren’s retreating back. The funeral party was stunned, but no one made a sound. Adjutant Ren, unaware of what was happening, strode confidently into the village, the bright yellow gear-wheel in the sky shining in his face. Father saw the pistol jerk once, but the explosion was so weak and so distant he wasn’t sure he heard it. He watched the bullet’s low trajectory as it parted Adjutant Ren’s shiny black hair before moving on. Without so much as turning his head or breaking stride, Adjutant Ren continued on into the village.
The sound of whistling drifted towards Father’s ears. It was the familiar sound of ‘The sorghum is red, the sorghum is red!’ Hot tears filled his eyes. The receding figure of Adjutant Ren grew larger and larger. Commander Yu fired another shot; this time it was so loud it rocked the earth and startled the heavens. Father saw the bullet’s flight and heard the explosion at the same time. The bullet struck a sorghum plant, severing its head, which was shattered by a second bullet as it settled slowly to the ground. Father was vaguely aware that Adjutant Ren bent over and plucked the yellow blossom from a bitter-weed at the roadside, then held it up to his nose and savoured its fragrance for a long time.
Father told me that Adjutant Ren was a rarity, a true hero; unfortunately, heroes are fated to die young. Three months after he had walked so proudly away from the heroic gathering, his Browning pistol went off while he was cleaning it and killed him. The bullet entered his right eye and exited through his right ear, leaving half of his face covered with a metallic blue powder. A mere three or four drops of blood seeped out of his right ear, and by the time the people who heard the shot had rushed over, he was lying dead on the ground.
Wordlessly, Commander Yu picked up Adjutant Ren’s Browning pistol.
7
GRANDMA, CARRYING BASKETS of fistcakes on the pole over her shoulder, and Wang Wenyi’s wife, carrying two pails of mungbean soup, rushed towards the bridge across the Black Water River. Though they had planned at first to head southeast through the sorghum field, they found the going too hard. ‘Let’s take the road, Sister-in-Law,’ Grandma suggested. ‘The long way round is fastest.’
They were like high-flying birds making good headway through the open sky. Grandma had put on a scarlet jacket and oiled her hair until it glistened like ebony. Wang’s wife, a vigorous but diminutive woman, was nimble on her feet. Back when Commander Yu was recruiting troops, she had brought Wenyi over to the house and asked Grandma to speak to Commander Yu to sign him up as a guerrilla. Grandma had promised she would, and Commander Yu had taken him on for her sake.
‘Are you afraid of dying?’ Commander Yu had asked him.