Grandma climbed back onto the donkey after they’d managed to drag one another past Toad Hollow. Gradually she became aware of the smell of sorghum wine floating on the northeast wind. She whipped up her courage, but as she drew nearer to the climactic scene of the drama her sense of fear and foreboding was as strong as ever. Steam rose from the ground under the blazing sun, but shivers ran down her spine. The village where the Shans lived was far away, and Grandma, surrounded by the thick aroma of sorghum wine, felt as if the marrow in her spine had frozen solid. A man in the field to her right began to sing in a loud, full voice:
Little sister, boldly you move on
Your jaw set like a steel trap
Bones as hard as cast bronze
From high atop the embroidery tower
You toss down the embroidered ball
Striking me on the head
Now join me in a toast with dark-red sorghum wine.
‘Hey there, opera singer, come out! That’s terrible singing! Just awful!’ Great-Granddad shouted towards the sorghum field.
3
FATHER FINISHED HIS fistcake as he stood on the withered grass, turned blood-red by the setting sun. Then he walked gingerly up to the edge of the water. There on the stone bridge across the Black Water River the lead truck, its tyres flattened by the barrier of linked rakes, crouched in front of the other three. Its railings and fenders were stained by splotches of gore. The upper half of a Japanese soldier was draped over one of the railings, his steel helmet hanging upturned by a strap from his neck. Dark blood dripped into it from the tip of his nose. The water sobbed as it flowed down the riverbed. The heavy, dull rays of sunlight were pulverised by tiny ripples on its surface. Autumn insects hidden in the damp mud beneath the water plants set up a mournful chirping. Sorghum in the fields sizzled as it matured. The fires were nearly out in the third and fourth trucks; their blackened hulks crackled and split, adding to the discordant symphony.
Father’s attention was riveted by the sight and sound of blood dripping from the Japanese soldier’s nose into the steel helmet, each drop splashing crisply and sending out rings of concentric circles in the deepening pool. Father had barely passed his fifteenth birthday. The sun had nearly set on this ninth day of the eighth lunar month of the year 1939, and the dying embers of its rays cast a red pall over the world below. Father’s face, turned unusually gaunt by the fierce daylong battle, was covered by a layer of purplish mud. He squatted down upriver from the corpse of Wang Wenyi’s wife and scooped up some water in his hands; the sticky water oozed through the cracks between his fingers and dropped noiselessly to the ground. Sharp pains racked his cracked, swollen lips, and the brackish taste of blood seeped between his teeth and slid down his throat, moistening the parched membranes. He experienced a satisfying pain, and even though the taste of blood made his stomach churn, he scooped up handful after handful of water, drinking it down until it soaked up the dry, cracked fistcake in his stomach. He stood up straight and took a deep breath of relief.
Night was definitely about to fall; the ridge of the sky’s dome was tinged with the final sliver of red. The scorched smell from the burned-out hulks of the trucks had faded. A loud bang made Father jump. He looked up, just in time to see exploded bits of truck tyres settling slowly into the river like black butterflies, and countless kernels of Japanese rice – some black, some white – soaring upward, then raining down on the still surface of the river. As he spun around, his eyes settled on the tiny figure of Wang Wenyi’s wife lying at the edge of the river, the blood from her wounds staining the water around her. He scrambled to the top of the dike and yelled: ‘Dad!’
Granddad was standing on the dike, the flesh on his face wasted away by the day’s battle, the bones jutting out beneath his dark, weathered skin. In the dying sunlight Father noticed that Granddad’s short-cropped hair was turning white. With fear in his aching heart, Father nudged him timidly.
‘Dad,’ he said, ‘Dad! What’s wrong with you?’
Tears were running down Granddad’s face. He was sobbing. The Japanese machine gun that Detachment Leader Leng had so magnanimously left behind sat at his feet like a crouching wolf, its muzzle gaping.
‘Say something, Dad. Eat that fistcake, then drink some water. You’ll die if you don’t eat or drink.’
Granddad’s head drooped until it rested on his chest. He seemed to lack the strength to support its weight. He knelt at the top of the dike, holding his head in his hands and sobbing. After a moment, or two, he looked up and cried out: ‘Douguan, my son! Is it all over for us?’
Father stared wide-eyed and fearfully at Granddad. The glare in his diamondlike pupils embodied the heroic, unrestrained spirit of Grandma, a flicker of hope that shone and lit up Granddad’s heart.
‘Dad,’ Father said, ‘don’t give up. I’ll work hard on my shooting, like when you shot fish at the inlet to perfect your seven-plum-blossom skill. Then we’ll go settle accounts with that rotten son of a bitch Pocky Leng!’
Granddad sprang to his feet and bellowed three times – half wail, half crazed laughter. A line of dark-purple blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.
‘That’s it, son, that’s the way to talk!’
He picked up one of Grandma’s fistcakes from the dark earth, bit off a chunk, and swallowed it. Cake crumbs and flecks of bubbly blood stuck to his stained teeth. Father heard Granddad’s painful cries as the dry cake stuck in his throat and saw the rough edges make their way down his neck.
‘Dad,’ Father said, ‘go drink some water to soak up the cake in your belly.’
Granddad stumbled along the dike to the river’s edge, where he knelt among the water plants and lapped up the water like a draught animal. When he’d had his fill, he drew his hands back and buried his head in the river, holding it under the water for about half the time it takes to smoke a pipeful of tobacco. Father started getting nervous as he gazed at his dad, frozen like a bronze frog at the river’s edge. Finally, Granddad jerked his dripping head out of the water and gasped for breath. Then he walked back up the dike to stand in front of Father, whose eyes were glued to the cascading drops of water. Granddad shook his head, sending forty-nine drops, large and small, flying like so many pearls.
‘Douguan,’ he said, ‘come with Dad. Let’s go see the men.’
Granddad staggered down the road, weaving in and out of the sorghum field on the western edge, Father right on his heels. They stepped on broken, twisted stalks of sorghum and spent cartridges that gave off a faint yellow glint. Frequently they bent down to look at the bodies of their fallen comrades, who lay amid the sorghum, deathly grimaces frozen on their faces. Granddad and Father shook them in hope of finding one who was alive; but they were dead, all of them. Father’s and Granddad’s hands were covered with sticky blood. Father looked down at two soldiers on the westernmost edge of the field: one lay with the muzzle of his shotgun in his mouth, the back of his neck a gory mess, like a rotten wasps’ nest; the other lay across a bayonet buried in his chest. When Granddad turned them over, Father saw that their legs had been broken and their bellies slit open. Granddad sighed as he withdrew the shotgun from the one soldier’s mouth and pulled the bayonet from the other’s chest.
Father followed Granddad across the road, into the sorghum field to the east, which had also been swept by machine-gun fire. They turned over the bodies of more soldiers lying strewn across the ground. Bugler Liu was on his knees, bugle in hand, as though he were blowing it: ‘Bugler Liu!’ Granddad called out excitedly. No response. Father ran up and nudged him. ‘Uncle Liu!’ he shouted, as the bugle dropped to the ground. When Father looked more closely, he discovered that the bugler’s face was already as hard as a rock.