In some significant aspects, heroes are born, not made. Heroic qualities flow through a person’s veins like an undercurrent, ready to be translated into action. During her first sixteen years, Grandma’s days had been devoted to embroidery, needlework, paper cutouts, foot binding, the endless glossing of her hair, and all other manner of domestic things in the company of neighbour girls. What, then, was the source of her ability and courage to deal with the events she encountered in her adult years? How was she able to temper herself to the point where even in the face of danger she could conquer her fears and force herself to act heroically? I’m not sure I know.
Grandma wept for a long time without feeling much true grief; as she cried, she relived the joys and pleasures of her past, even the suffering and sorrow. The sounds of crying seemed to be a distant musical accompaniment to the beautiful and hideous images appearing and reappearing in her mind. Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?
‘Time to leave, Little Nine,’ Great-Granddad said, calling her by her childhood name.
Leave! Leave! Leave!
Grandma asked for a basin of water to wash her face. Then she applied some powder and rouge. As she looked in the mirror, she loosened her hairnet, releasing long, flowing hair that quickly covered her back with its satiny sheen, all the way down to the curve of her legs. When she pulled it across her shoulder with her left hand, it spilled over her breast, where she combed it out with a pear-wood comb. Grandma had uncommonly thick, shiny, black hair that lightened a bit at the tips. Once it was combed out smooth, she twisted it into large ebony blossoms, which she secured with four silver combs. Then she trimmed her fringe so that it fell just short of her eyebrows. After rewrapping her feet, she put on a pair of white cotton stockings, tied her trouser cuffs tightly, and slipped on a pair of embroidered slippers that accentuated her bound feet.
It was Grandma’s tiny feet that had caught the attention of Shan Tingxiu, and it was her tiny feet that had aroused the passions of the sedan bearer Yu Zhan’ao. She was very proud of them. Even a pock-faced witch is assured of marriage if she has tiny bound feet, but no one wants a girl with large unbound feet, even if she has the face of an immortal. Grandma, with her bound feet and lovely face, was one of the true beauties of her time. Throughout our long history, the delicate, pointed tips of women’s feet have been viewed as genital organs, in a way, from which men have derived a sort of aesthetic pleasure that sets their sexual juices flowing.
Now that she was ready, Grandma left the house, clicking her feet. A blanket had been thrown over the back of the family’s little donkey, in whose glistening eyes Grandma noticed a spark of human understanding. She swung her leg over the donkey’s back and straddled it, unlike most women. Great-Grandma had tried to get her to ride sidesaddle, but Grandma dug in her heels and the donkey started off down the road, its rider sitting proudly on its back, head up and eyes straight ahead.
Once she was on her way, Grandma didn’t look back, and although Great-Granddad was holding the reins at first, when they were out of the village she took them from him and guided the donkey herself, leaving him to trot along behind her.
Another thunderstorm had struck during the three days. Grandma noticed a section of sorghum the size of a millstone where the leaves were singed and shrivelled, a spot of emaciated whiteness amid the surrounding green. Assuming that lightning was the culprit, she was reminded of the previous year, when lightning had struck and killed her friend Beauty, a girl of seventeen, literally frying her hair and burning her clothes to cinders. A design had been scorched into her back, which some people said was the script of heavenly tadpoles.
Rumours spread that greed had killed Beauty, who had caused the death of an abandoned baby. The details were lurid. On her way to market one day, she heard a bawling baby by the roadside. When she unwrapped the swaddling clothes she found a pink, newborn baby boy and a note that said: ‘Father was eighteen, mother seventeen, the moon was directly overhead, the three stars were in the western sky, when our son, Road Joy, was born. Father had already married Second Sister Zhang, a girl with unbound feet from West Village. Mother will marry Scar Eye from East Village. It breaks our hearts to abandon our newborn son. Snot runs down his father’s chin, tears stream down his mother’s cheeks, but we stifle our sobs so no one will hear us. Road Joy, Road Joy, our joy on the road, whoever finds you will be your parents. We have wrapped you in a yard of silk, and have left twenty silver dollars. We beg a kindhearted passerby to store up karma by saving our son’s precious life.’
People said that Beauty took the silk and the silver dollars, but abandoned the infant in the sorghum field, for which heaven punished her by sending down a bolt of lightning. Grandma refused to believe the rumours about her best friend, but as she pondered the tragic mysteries of life her heart was gripped by desolation and melancholy.
The rain-soaked road was still wet and pitted by pelting raindrops; soft mud, with a light oily sheen, filled the holes. Once again the donkey left its hoofprints in the mud. Katydids hid in the grass and on the sorghum leaves, vibrating their long silken beards and sawing their transparent wings to produce a cheerless sound. The long summer was about to end, and the sombre smell of autumn was in the air. Swarms of locusts, sensing the change of season, dragged their seed-filled bellies out of the sorghum fields onto the road, where they bored their hindquarters into the hard surface to lay their eggs.
Great-Granddad snapped off a sorghum stalk and smacked the rump of the weary donkey, which tucked its tail between its legs and shot forward a few paces before resuming its unhurried pace. Great-Granddad must have been feeling very pleased with himself as he walked behind the donkey, for he began singing snatches of popular local opera, making up the words as he went along. ‘Wu Dalang drank poison, how bad he felt… His seven lengths of intestines and the eight lobes of his lungs lurched and trembled… The ugly man took a beautiful wife, bringing calamity to his door… Ah – ye – ye… Big Wu’s belly is killing him… waiting for Second Brother to complete his mission… to return home and avenge his murder…’
Grandma’s heart thumped wildly as she listened to Great-Granddad’s crazy song. The image of that scowling young man, sword in hand, appeared in a flash. Who was he? What was he up to? It dawned on her that, even though they didn’t know each other, their lives were already as close as fish and water. Their sole encounter had been lightning quick and was over in a flash, like a dream, yet not like a dream. She had been shaken to the depths of her soul, overcome by spirits. Resign yourself to your fate, she thought as she heaved a long sigh.
Grandma let the donkey proceed freely as she listened to her dad’s fractured rendition of the Wu Dalang song. A breath of wind and a puff of fire, and there they were, in Toad Hollow. The donkey kept its nostrils closed tight as it pawed the ground, refusing to go any farther, even when Great-Granddad smacked it on the rump with his sorghum switch. ‘Get moving, you bastard! Get going, you rotten donkey bastard!’ The switch sang out against the donkey’s rump, but instead of moving forward, it backed up.
An awful stench assailed Grandma’s nostrils. Quickly dismounting and covering her nose with her sleeve, she tugged on the reins to get the donkey moving. It looked up at her, its mouth open, tears filling its eyes. ‘Donkey,’ she said, ‘grit your teeth and walk past it. There’s no mountain that can’t be scaled and no river that can’t be forded.’ Moved by her words, it raised its head and brayed, then galloped forward, dragging her along so fast her feet barely touched the ground and her clothes fluttered in the wind like red clouds tumbling in the sky. She glanced at the sham highwayman’s corpse as they passed. A scene of filth and corruption greeted her eyes: a million fat maggots had gorged themselves until only a few pieces of rotting flesh covered his bones.