Grandma walked outside with poise and grace. After grilling Yu Zhan’ao for a while, she waved her hand and said, ‘Take him over there. We’ll try him for a month. His wages start tomorrow.’
So Yu Zhan’ao became a hired hand in the family distillery. With his strength and clever hands, he was an ideal worker, and Uncle Arhat sang his praises to Grandma. At the end of the first month, he summoned him and said, ‘The mistress likes the way you work, so we’ll keep you on.’ He handed him a cloth bundle. ‘She wants you to have these.’
He undid the bundle. Inside was a pair of new cloth shoes. ‘Foreman,’ he said, ‘please tell the mistress that Yu Zhan’ao thanks her for the gift.’
‘You can go,’ said Uncle Arhat. ‘I expect you to work hard.’
‘I will,’ Yu Zhan’ao promised.
Another two weeks passed, and Yu Zhan’ao was finding it harder and harder to control himself. The mistress came to the eastern compound every day to look around, but directed her questions only to Uncle Arhat, paying hardly any attention to the sweaty hired hands. That did not sit well with Yu Zhan’ao.
Back when the distillery was run by Shan Tingxiu and his son, the workers’ meals were prepared and sent over by café owners in the village. But after Grandma took charge, she hired a middle-aged woman whom everyone called ‘the woman Liu’, and a teenaged girl named Passion. They lived in the western compound, where they were responsible for all the cooking. Then Grandma increased the number of dogs in the compound from two to five. Now that the western compound was home to three women and five dogs, it became a lively little world of its own. At night the slightest disturbance set off the dogs, and any intruder not bitten to death would surely have the wits frightened out of him.
By the time Yu Zhan’ao had been working the distillery cooker for eight weeks, it was the ninth lunar month, and the sorghum in the fields was good and ripe. Grandma told Uncle Arhat to hire some temporary labourers to clean the yard and open-air bins in preparation for the harvest. They were clear, sunny days with a deep sky. Grandma, dressed in white silk and wearing red satin slippers, carried a willow switch around the yard, with her dogs running on her heels, drawing strange looks from the villagers, although none dared so much as fart in her presence. Yu Zhan’ao approached her several times, but she stayed aloof and wouldn’t bestow a word on him.
One night Yu Zhan’ao drank a little more than usual, and wound up getting slightly drunk. He tossed and turned on the communal kang, but couldn’t fall asleep, as moonlight streamed in through the window in the eastern wall. Two hired hands sat beneath a bean-oil lantern mending their clothes.
Then Old Du took out his stringed instrument and began playing sad tunes, striking resonant chords in the hearts of the listeners. Something was bound to happen. One of the men mending his clothes was so moved by Old Du’s melancholy tunes that his throat began to itch. ‘It’s no fun being alone,’ he sang hoarsely, ‘no fun at all. Tattered clothes never get sewn…’
‘Why not get the mistress to sew them for you?’
‘The mistress? I wonder who will feast on that tender swan.’
‘The old master and his son thought it would be them, and they wound up dead.’
‘I hear she had an affair with Spotted Neck while she was still living at home.’
‘Are you saying Spotted Neck murdered them?’
‘Not so loud. “Words spoken on the road are heard by snakes in the grass!”’
Yu Zhan’ao lay on the kang sneering.
‘What’re you smirking for, Little Yu?’ one of them asked.
Emboldened by the wine, he blurted out, ‘I murdered them!’
‘You’re drunk!’
‘Drunk? I tell you, I murdered them!’ He sat up, reached into the bag hanging on the wall, and pulled out his short sword. When he slid it out of the scabbard, it caught the moon’s rays and shone like a silverfish. ‘I’ll tell you guys,’ he said with a thick tongue, ‘our mistress… I slept with her… Sorghum fields… Came at night and set a fire… stabbed one… stabbed the other…’
One of his listeners quietly blew out the lantern, throwing the room into a murky darkness in which the moonlit sword shone even more brightly.
‘Go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep! We have to be up early tomorrow to make wine!’
Yu Zhan’ao was still mumbling. ‘You… damn you… pretend you don’t know me after you hitch up your pants… work me like an ox or a horse… Don’t think you can get away with it… Tonight I’m going to… butcher you…’ He climbed off the kang, sword in hand, and staggered outside. The other men lay in the dark, staring wide-eyed at the moon glinting off the weapon in his hand, not daring to utter a sound.
Yu Zhan’ao walked into the moonlit yard and looked at the glazed wine vats glistening in the light like jewels. A southern breeze swept over from the fields, carrying the bittersweet aroma of ripe sorghum and making him shiver. The sound of a woman’s giggle drifted over from the western compound. As he slipped into the tent to move the bench outside, he was met by the pawing sounds of the black mule tethered behind the feed trough. Ignoring the animal, he carried the bench over to the wall. When he stepped on it and straightened up, the top of the wall reached his chest. A light behind the window illuminated the paper cutout. The mistress was playing games with the girl Passion on the kang. ‘Aren’t you a couple of naughty little monkeys?’ he heard the woman Liu say. ‘It’s bedtime; now, go to sleep!’ Then she added, ‘Passion, look in the pot and see if the dough has begun to rise.’
Holding the sword in his mouth, Yu Zhan’ao climbed up onto the wall. The five dogs rushed over, looked up, and began to bark, frightening him so badly he lost his balance and tumbled into the western compound. If Grandma hadn’t rushed out to see what was going on, the dogs probably would have torn him to pieces, even if there had been two of him.
After calling off the dogs, Grandma shouted for Passion to bring out the lantern.
The woman Liu, rolling-pin in hand, came running out on big feet that had once been bound and screamed, ‘A thief! Grab him!’
Passion followed, lantern in hand, the light falling on the battered face of Yu Zhan’ao. ‘So it’s you!’ Grandma said coldly.
She picked up the sword and tucked it into her sleeve. ‘Passion, go fetch Uncle Arhat.’
No sooner had Passion opened the gate than Uncle Arhat entered the compound. ‘What’s going on, Mistress?’
‘This hired hand of yours is drunk,’ she said.
‘Yes, he is,’ Uncle Arhat confirmed.
‘Passion,’ Grandma said, ‘bring me my willow switch.’
Passion fetched Grandma’s white willow switch. ‘This’ll sober you up,’ Grandma said as she twirled the switch in the air and brought it down hard on Yu Zhan’ao’s buttocks.
Stung by the pain, he experienced a sense of numbing ecstasy, and when it reached his throat it set his teeth moving and emerged as a stream of gibberish: ‘Mistress Mistress Mistress…’
Grandma whipped him until her arm was about to fall off, then lowered the switch and stood there panting from exhaustion.
‘Take him away,’ she said.
Uncle Arhat stepped up to pull Yu Zhan’ao to his feet, but he refused to get up. ‘Mistress,’ he shouted, ‘a few more lashes… just give me a few more…’
Grandma whipped him twice on the neck with all her might, and he rolled around on the ground like a little boy, kicking the air with his legs. Uncle Arhat called for a couple of hired hands to carry him back to the bunkhouse, where they flung him down on the kang; he rolled around like a squirming dragonfly, a stream of filth and abuse gushing from his mouth. Uncle Arhat picked up a decanter, told the men to pin his arms and legs, and poured wine down his throat. As soon as the men let go, his head lolled to the side and he grew silent. ‘You drowned him!’ one of them exclaimed fearfully, bringing the lantern up. Yu Zhan’ao’s face was contorted out of shape, and he sneezed violently, extinguishing the lantern.