He didn’t wake up until the sun was high in the sky. He walked into the distillery as though stepping on cotton; the men watched him curiously. Recalling the beating he’d received the night before, he rubbed his neck and his buttocks, but felt no pain. Thirsty, he picked up a ladle, scooped some wine from the flow, tipped back his head, and drank it down.
Old Du the fiddler said, ‘Little Yu, your mistress gave you quite a beating last night. I’ll bet you won’t be climbing that wall again.’
Up till then the gloomy young man had instilled a measure of fear in the others, but that had evaporated when they heard his pitiful screams, and now they outdid one another teasing him mercilessly. Without a word in reply, he grabbed one of them, raised his fist, and buried it in the man’s face. A quick exchange of glances, and the others rushed up, threw him to the ground, and began raining blows on him with fists and feet. When they’d had their fill, they took off his belt, stuck his head into the crotch of his pants, tied his hands behind his back, and threw him to the ground.
Like a stranded tiger or a beached dragon, Yu Zhan’ao struggled to get free, rolling around on the ground like a ball for as long as it takes to smoke a couple of pipefuls. Finally, having seen enough, old Du went up, untied Granddad’s hands, and freed his head from his pants. Yu Zhan’ao’s face was pallid as a sheet of gold paper as he lay on the pile of firewood like a dying snake. It took him a long time to catch his breath. Meanwhile, the others held on to their tools, just in case he took it into his head to get even. But he just staggered over to one of the vats, ladled out some wine, and began gulping it down. When he was finished, he climbed back up onto the pile of firewood and fell fast asleep.
From then on, Yu Zhan’ao got roaring drunk every day, then climbed up onto the pile of firewood and lay there, his moist blue eyes half closed, a mixed smile on his lips: the left side foolish, the right side crafty, or vice versa. For the first few days, the men watched him with interest; after a while, they began to grumble. Uncle Arhat tried to get him to do some work, but Yu Zhan’ao just looked at him out of the corner of his eye and said, ‘Who the hell do you think you are? I’m the master here. That kid in her belly is mine.’
By then my father had grown in Grandma’s belly to about the size of a little ball, and in the mornings the sound of her retching in the yard drifted over to the western compound. The experienced old-timers talked about nothing else. When the woman Liu brought over their food, they asked her, ‘Old Woman Liu, is the mistress with child?’
She glared at them. ‘Watch out, or someone might cut out your tongue!’
‘Looks like Shan Bianlang knew what he was doing after all!’
‘Maybe it’s the old master’s.’
‘No wild guessing! Do you really think a spirited girl like that would let one of the Shan men touch her? I’ll bet it was Spotted Neck.’
Yu Zhan’ao jumped up from the pile of firewood and gestured gleefully. ‘It was me!’ he shouted. ‘Ha ha, it was me!’
They had a good laugh over that, and cursed him roundly.
On more than one occasion, Uncle Arhat urged Grandma to dismiss Yu Zhan’ao, but she invariably replied, ‘Let him rant and rave if he wants to. I’ll fix his wagon sooner or later.’
One day she walked into the compound, her thickening waist obvious to all, to speak with Uncle Arhat.
Avoiding her eyes, he said softly, ‘Mistress, it’s time to break out the scales and buy the sorghum.’
‘Is everything ready? The compound and the grain bins?’
‘Everything’s ready.’
‘When did you do it in the past?’
‘Just about now.’
‘Let’s wait a while longer this year.’
‘We might lose out. There are at least ten other distilleries.’
‘The harvest has been so good this year there’s more than they can handle. Put up a notice that we’re not ready yet. We’ll buy when the others have had their fill. By then we can name our own price, and the grain will have more time to dry out.’
‘You’re probably right.’
‘Anything else we need to talk about?’
‘Not really, except for that hired hand. He gets so drunk every day he can hardly move. Let’s pay him off and get rid of him.’
Grandma thought for a moment. ‘Take me to the distillery so I can see for myself.’
Uncle Arhat led the way to the distillery, where the workers were just then pouring fermented mash into the distiller. The firewood beneath the cooker crackled and the water roiled, sending clouds of steam into the distiller, a three-foot-high wooden vessel with tightly woven bamboo strips at the base, which fitted over the cooker. Four men with wooden spades ladled the sorghum mash, a green-spotted, sweet-smelling fermented mixture, from the vat into the steaming distiller. Since the steam had nowhere else to go, it filtered up through the cracks in the base, and the alert men dumped the mash wherever the steam was coming through, to keep the heat from dissipating.
When they saw Grandma approaching, they threw themselves into their work. From his firewood perch, Yu Zhan’ao, who looked like a dirty-faced, ragged beggar, stared at Grandma with a cold glint in his eyes.
‘I came to see how sorghum is converted into wine,’ Grandma said.
Uncle Arhat moved a stool over for her.
The men, favoured by her presence, worked as never before. The stoker kept the fires blazing under the cookpots. The water bubbled, sending sizzling steam snaking its way up through the distiller to merge with the panting sounds of the workers. When they had filled the distiller with mash, they covered it with a tight-fitting honeycombed lid to let the mixture cook until wisps of steam began to ooze from the tiny openings in the lid. They quickly brought over a double-plate pewter object with a concave centre. Uncle Arhat told Grandma it was the distiller. She walked over to get a closer look, then returned to the stool without a word.
The men placed the pewter distiller over the wooden one to block out the steam. The only sounds came from the roaring fires beneath the cookpot. The wooden distiller was white one minute and orange the next, as a delicate, sweet aroma, sort of like wine but not quite, seeped through the wooden vessel.
‘Add cool water,’ Uncle Arhat said.
The men climbed up onto a bench and began pouring cool water into the concave centre of the pewter distiller. One of them stirred the water rapidly with what looked like an oar, and after about half the time it takes a joss stick to burn down, Grandma’s nostrils were filled with the smell of wine.
‘Get ready to catch the wine,’ Uncle Arhat ordered.
Two men ran up with wine crocks woven of wax reeds and covered with ten layers of paper, then sealed with many coats of varnish. They placed the crocks under distiller spouts that looked like duck beaks.
Grandma stood up and stared at the spouts as the stoker shoved pieces of pine-oil-soaked firewood into the stoves, which crackled loudly and spat out clouds of white smoke that lit up the men’s greasy, sweaty chests.
‘Change the water!’ Uncle Arhat shouted.
Two men rushed into the yard and came running back with four buckets of cool well water. The man on the stool pulled a lever, releasing the heated water from the top of the distiller. Then he poured in the fresh water and continued stirring.
Grandma was stirred by the solemn, sacred labour. Just then she felt my father move inside her belly, and looked over at Yu Zhan’ao, who was lying on the pile of firewood staring at her with a sinister glint in his eyes, the only cold spots in the steamy distilling tent. The stirring in her heart cooled off. She averted her eyes and calmly watched the two men with the crocks, who were waiting for the wine to flow.