Grandma looks contentedly at Father’s exquisite face. She and Commander Yu had joined to create him in the shadows of the sorghum field; lively images of the irretrievable past streak past her eyes like racehorses.
It was raining as she sat in the bridal sedan chair, like a boat on the ocean, and was carried into Shan Tingxiu’s compound. The street was flooded with water, peppered by a layer of sorghum seeds. At the front door she was met by a wizened old man with a tiny queue in the shape of a kidney bean. The rain had stopped, but an occasional drop splashed onto the watery ground. Although the musicians had announced her arrival with their instruments, no one had emerged to watch the show; Grandma knew that was a bad sign. Two men came out to help her perform her obeisances, one in his fifties, the other in his forties. The fifty-year-old was none other than Uncle Arhat Liu, the other was one of the distillery hands.
The musicians and bearers stood in the puddles like drenched chickens, sombrely watching the two dried-up men lead my soft-limbed, rosy-cheeked grandma into the dark wedding-chamber. The men exuded a pungent aroma of wine, as if they had been soaked in the vats.
Grandma was taken up to a kang in the worship hall and told to sit on it. Since no one came up to remove her red veil, she took it off herself. A man with a facial tic sat curled up on a stool next to her. The bottom part of his flat, elongated face was red and festering. He stood up and stuck a clawlike hand out towards Grandma, who screamed in horror and reached into her bodice for the scissors; she glared intently at the man, who recoiled and curled up on the stool again. Grandma didn’t set down her scissors once that night, nor did the man climb down from his stool.
Early the next morning, before the man woke up, Grandma slipped down off the kang, burst through the front door, and opened the gate; just as she was about to flee the premises, a hand reached out and grabbed her. The old man with the kidney-bean queue had her by the wrist and was looking at her with hate-filled eyes.
Shan Tingxiu coughed dryly once or twice as his expression softened. ‘Child,’ he said, ‘now that you’re married, you’re like my own daughter. Bianlang doesn’t have what everybody says. Don’t listen to their talk. We’ve got a good business, and Bianlang’s a good boy. Now that you’re here, the home is your responsibility.’ Shan Tingxiu held out to her a ring of bronze keys, but she didn’t take them from him.
Grandma sat up all the next night, scissors in hand.
On the morning of the third day, my maternal great-granddad led a donkey up to the house to take Grandma home; it was a Northeast Gaomi Township custom for a bride to return to her parents’ home three days after her wedding. Great-Granddad spent the morning drinking with Shan Tingxiu, then set out for home shortly after noon.
Grandma sat sidesaddle on the donkey, swaying from side to side as the animal left the village. Even though it hadn’t rained for three days, the road was still wet, and steam rose from the sorghum in the fields, the green stalks shrouded in swirling whiteness, as though in the presence of immortals. Great-Granddad’s silver coins clinked and jingled in the saddlebags. He was so drunk he could barely walk, and his eyes were glassy. The donkey proceeded slowly, its long neck bobbing up and down, its tiny hooves leaving muddy imprints. Grandma had only ridden a short distance when she began to get lightheaded; her eyes were red and puffy, her hair mussed, and the sorghum in the fields, a full joint taller than it had been three days earlier, mocked her as she passed.
‘Dad,’ Grandma called out, ‘I don’t want to go back there any more. I’ll kill myself before I go back there again…’
‘Daughter,’ Great-Granddad replied, ‘you have no idea how lucky you are. Your father-in-law said he’s going to give me a big black mule. I’m going to sell this runty little thing…’
The donkey nibbled some mud-splattered grass that lined the road.
‘Dad,’ Grandma sobbed, ‘he’s got leprosy…’
‘Your father-in-law is going to give me a mule…’
Great-Granddad, drunk as a lord, kept vomiting into the weeds by the side of the road. The filth and bile set Grandma’s stomach churning, and she felt nothing but loathing for him.
As the donkey walked into Toad Hollow, they were met by an overpowering stench that caused its ears to droop. Grandma spotted the highwayman’s bloated corpse, which was covered by a layer of emerald-coloured flies. The donkey skirted the corpse, sending the flies swarming angrily into the air to form a green cloud. Great-Granddad followed the donkey, his body seemingly wider than the road itself: one moment he was stumbling into the sorghum to the left of the road, the next moment he was trampling on weeds to the right. And when he reached the corpse, he gasped ‘Oh!’ several times, and said through quaking lips, ‘Poor beggar… you poor beggar… you sleeping there?…’ Grandma never forgot the highwayman’s pumpkin face. In that instant when the flies swarmed into the air she was struck by the remarkable contrast between the graceful elegance of his dead face and the mean, cowardly expression he’d worn in life.
The distance between them lengthened, one li at a time, with the sun’s rays slanting down, the sky high and clear; the donkey quickly outpaced Great-Granddad. Since it knew the way home, it carried Grandma at a carefree saunter. Up ahead was a bend in the road, and as the donkey negotiated the turn, Grandma tipped backward, leaving the security of the animal’s back. A muscular arm swept her off and carried her into the sorghum field.
Grandma fought halfheartedly. She really didn’t feel like struggling. The three days she had just got through were nightmarish. Certain individuals become great leaders in an instant; Grandma unlocked the mysteries of life in three days. She even wrapped her arms around his neck to make it easier for him to carry her. Sorghum leaves rustled. Great-Granddad’s hoarse voice drifted over on the wind: ‘Daughter, where the hell are you?’
The long, sorrowful blast of a bugle near the bridge is immediately followed by the staccato rhythm of machine-gun fire. Grandma’s blood continues to flow in concert with her breathing. ‘Mom,’ Father pleads, ‘don’t let your blood run out. You’ll die when it’s all gone.’ He scoops up a handful of black dirt and smears it over her wound; blood quickly seeps out from under it. He scoops up another handful. Grandma smiles in gratitude, her eyes fixed on the azure sky, deep beyond imagining, and fixed on the warm, forgiving, motherly, nurturing sorghum around her. A glossy green path, bordered by tiny white flowers, appears in her mind.
Grandma rode the donkey down this path, leisurely and carefree, while from deep amid the sorghum the stalwart young man raised his voice in a serenade that skimmed the top of the field. She was drawn to the serenade, her feet barely touching the tips of the sorghum plants, as though riding a green cloud…
The man placed Grandma on the ground, where she lay as limp as a ribbon of dough, her eyes narrowed like those of a lamb. He ripped away the black mask, revealing his face to her. It’s him! A silent prayer to heaven. A powerful feeling of pure joy rocked her, filling her eyes with hot tears.
Yu Zhan’ao removed his rain cape and tramped out a clearing in the sorghum, then spread his cape over the sorghum corpses. He lifted Grandma onto the cape. Her soul fluttered as she gazed at his bare torso. A light mist rose from the tips of the sorghum, and all around she could hear the sounds of growth. No wind, no waving motion, just the white-hot rays of moist sunlight crisscrossing through the open cracks between plants. The passion in Grandma’s heart, built up over sixteen years, suddenly erupted. She squirmed and twisted on the cape. Yu Zhan’ao, getting smaller and smaller, fell loudly to his knees at her side. She was trembling from head to toe; a redolent yellow ball of fire crackled and sizzled before her eyes. Yu Zhan’ao roughly tore open her jacket, exposing the small white mounds of chilled, tense flesh to the sunlight. Answering his force, she cried out in a muted, hoarse voice, ‘My God…,’ and swooned.