Ignoring his mumbling, she swung her leg over the donkey’s back and turned her face, brushed by the winds of spring, towards the sorghum field south of the road. She knew that the young sedan bearer was watching her. Struggling to wrench free of this unknown passion, she had a dim vision of a new and unfamiliar broad road stretching out ahead of her, covered with sorghum seeds as red as rubies, the ditches on either side filled with crystal-clear sorghum wine. As she moved down the road, her imagination coloured the genuine article until she could not distinguish between reality and illusion.
Yu Zhan’ao followed her with his eyes until she rounded a bend. Feeling suddenly weary, he pushed his way through the sorghum and returned to the sacred altar, where he collapsed like a toppled wall and fell into a sound sleep. Later, as the red sun was disappearing in the west, his eyes snapped open, and the first things he saw were sorghum leaves, stems, and ears of grain that formed a thick blanket of purplish red above him. He draped his rain cape over his shoulders and walked out of the field as a rapid breeze on the road caused the sorghum to rustle noisily. He wrapped the cape tightly around him to ward off the chill, and as his hand brushed against his belly he realised how hungry he was. He dimly recalled the three shacks at the head of the village where he had carried the woman in the sedan chair three days ago, and the tattered tavern flag snapping and fluttering in the raging winds of the rainstorm. So hungry he could neither sit still nor stand straight, he strode towards the tavern. Since he had been hiring out for the Northeast Gaomi Township Wedding and Funeral Service Company for less than two years, the people around here wouldn’t recognise him. He’d get something to eat and drink, find a way to do what he’d come to do, then slip into the sorghum fields, like a fish in the ocean, and swim far away.
At this point in his ruminations, he headed west, where bilious red clouds turned the setting sun into a blooming peony with a luminous, fearfully bright golden border. After walking west for a while, he turned north, heading straight for the village where Grandma’s nominal husband lived. The fields were still and deserted. During those years, any farmer who had food at home left his field before nightfall, turning the sorghum fields into a haven for bandits.
Village chimneys were smoking by the time he arrived, and a handsome young man was walking down the street with two crocks of fresh well water over his shoulder, the shifting water splashing over the sides. Yu Zhan’ao darted into the doorway beneath the tattered tavern flag. No inner walls separated the shacks, and a bar made of adobe bricks divided the room in two, the inner half of which was furnished with a brick kang, a stove, and a large vat. Two rickety tables with scarred tops and a few scattered narrow benches constituted the furnishings in the outer half of the room. A glazed wine crock rested on the bar, its ladle hanging from the rim. A fat old man was sprawled on the kang. Yu Zhan’ao recognised him as the Korean dog butcher they called Gook. He had seen Gook once at the market in Ma Hamlet. The man could slaughter a dog in less than a minute, and the hundreds of dogs that lived in Ma Hamlet growled viciously when they saw him, their fur standing straight up, though they kept their distance.
‘Barkeep, a bowl of wine!’ Yu Zhan’ao called out as he sat on one of the benches.
The fat old man didn’t stir, his rolling eyes the only movement on the kang.
‘Barkeep!’ Yu Zhan’ao shouted.
The fat old man pulled back the white dog pelt covering him and climbed down off the kang. Yu Zhan’ao noticed three more pelts hanging on the walclass="underline" one green, one blue, and one spotted.
The fat old man took a dark-red bowl out of an opening in the bar and ladled wine into it.
‘What do you have to go with the wine?’ Yu Zhan’ao asked.
‘Dog head!’ the fat old man snarled.
‘I want dog meat!’
‘Dog head’s all I’ve got!’
‘Okay, then.’
The old man removed the lid from the pot, in which a whole dog was cooking.
‘Forget the head,’ Yu Zhan’ao demanded. ‘I want some of that meat.’
Ignoring him, the old man picked up his cleaver and hacked at the dog’s neck, spattering the scalding soup about. Once he’d severed the head, he stuck a metal skewer into it and held it out over the bar. ‘I said I want dog meat!’ Yu Zhan’ao snapped, his ire rising.
The old man threw the dog head down on the bar and said angrily, ‘That’s what I’ve got. Take it or leave it!’
‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’
‘Just sit there like a good little boy!’ the old man warned. ‘What makes you think you can eat dog meat? I’m saving that for Spotted Neck.’
Spotted Neck was a famous bandit chief in Northeast Gaomi Township. Just hearing the name was enough to intimidate Yu Zhan’ao, for Spotted Neck was reputed to be a crack shot. His trademark of firing three shots in a circular motion had earned him the nickname Three-Nod Phoenix. People who knew guns could tell just by listening that Spotted Neck was nearby. Reluctantly Yu Zhan’ao held his tongue and, with the bowl of wine in one hand, reached out and picked up the dog head, then took a spiteful bite out of the animal’s snout. It was delicious, and he was ravenously hungry, so he dug in, eating quickly until the head and the wine were gone. With a final gaze at the bony skull, he stood up and belched.
‘One silver dollar,’ the fat old man said.
‘I’ve only got seven coppers,’ Yu Zhan’ao said, tossing the coins down on the table.
‘I said one silver dollar!’
‘And I said I’ve only got seven coppers!’
‘Do you really expect to eat without paying, boy?’
‘I’ve got seven copper coins and that’s it.’ Yu Zhan’ao stood up to leave, but the fat old man ran around the bar and grabbed him. As they were struggling, a tall, beefy man walked into the bar.
‘Hey, Gook, how come you haven’t lit your lantern?’
‘This guy thinks he can eat without paying!’
‘Cut out his tongue!’ the man said darkly. ‘And light the lantern!’
The fat old man let go of Yu Zhan’ao and walked behind the bar, where he stoked the fire and lit a bean-oil lamp. The glimmering light illuminated the stranger’s dark face. Yu Zhan’ao noticed that he was dressed in black satin from head to toe: a jacket with a row of cloth buttons down the front, a pair of wide-legged trousers tied at the ankles with black cotton straps, and black, double-buckled cloth shoes. His long, thick neck had a white spot on it the size of a fist. This, Yu Zhan’ao thought to himself, must be Spotted Neck.
Spotted Neck sized up Yu Zhan’ao, then stuck out his left hand and rested three fingers on his forehead. Yu Zhan’ao looked at him curiously.
Spotted Neck shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Not a bandit?’
‘I’m a sedan bearer for the service company.’
‘So you make your living with a pole,’ Spotted Neck said derisively. ‘Interested in eating fistcakes with me?’
‘No,’ Yu Zhan’ao replied.
‘Then get the hell out of here. You’re still young, so I’ll let you keep your tongue for kissing women! Go on, and watch what you say.’
Yu Zhan’ao backed out of the tavern, not sure whether he was angry or scared. He had grudging respect for the way Spotted Neck carried himself, but not to the exclusion of loathing.
Born into poverty, Yu Zhan’ao had lost his father when he was just a boy. So he and his mother had eked out a living by tending three mou – less than half an acre – of miserable land. His uncle, Big Tooth Yu, who dealt in mules and horses, had occasionally helped mother and son financially, but not all that often.
Then, when he was thirteen, his mother began an affair with the abbot at Tianqi Monastery. The well-to-do monk often brought rice and noodles over, and every time he came, Yu Zhan’ao’s mother sent the boy outside. Flames of anger raged inside him as sounds of revelry emerged from behind the closed door, and he could barely keep from torching the house. By the time he was sixteen, his mother was seeing the monk so frequently that the village was buzzing. A friend of his, Little Cheng the blacksmith, made him a short sword, with which he murdered the monk one drizzly spring night beside Pear Blossom Creek, named for the trees that lined it. They were in bloom on that wet night, blanketing the area with their delicate fragrance.