She was watching the muscles in his face twitch painfully, and noticed that his pale skin seemed covered with a yellow cast; despair filled his eyes.
‘It’s all over… Everything ended in that instant…’ Granddad mumbled in a voice that quavered like an old, old man’s.
He took out his pistol and shouted, ‘You’ve ruined me! Dog!’
He aimed the weapon at Red, who was still panting faintly, and pumped several shots into him.
Father struggled to his feet, rivulets of fresh, warm blood coursing down the inside of his thigh. He didn’t seem to be in much pain. ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘we won.’
‘Uncle, hurry up and take care of Douguan’s wound!’ Mother said.
Father looked at the testicle cupped in Granddad’s hand and asked with a note of astonishment, ‘Dad, is that mine? Is it?’ A wave of nausea hit him. He fainted.
Granddad threw down his staff, tore off two clean sorghum leaves and gently wrapped the thing up, then handed it to Mother. ‘Beauty,’ he said, ‘hold it carefully. I’m taking him to Dr Zhang Xinyi.’ He bent over, picked Father up, and then hobbled off down the road. Dogs wounded by the exploding grenades in the marshland whimpered pitifully.
Dr Zhang Xinyi, a man in his fifties, parted his hair right down the middle, something you seldom saw in the countryside. He wore a long, dark-blue gown, and had a pale face atop a frame so thin he seemed incapable of withstanding even the slightest breeze.
By the time Granddad had carried Father to the doctor, his back was bent almost double and his face had a ghostly pallor.
‘Is that you, Commander Yu? You certainly look different,’ Dr Zhang said.
‘Name your price, Doctor.’
Father had been laid out on the wooden-plank bed. ‘Is this your son, Commander?’ Dr Zhang asked him.
Granddad nodded.
‘The one who killed the Japanese general at the Black Water River bridge?’
‘I only have one son!’
‘I’ll do the best I can!’ Dr Zhang took some tweezers, a pair of scissors, a bottle of sorghum wine, and a vial of iodine out of his instrument bag, then bent over to examine the injury on Father’s face.
‘Take a look down there first, please, Doctor,’ Granddad said sombrely. Then he turned to Mother and took the sorghum leaves in which the testicle was wrapped out of her hands. He placed it on the wooden cabinet beside the bed. The leaves spread open.
Dr Zhang picked up the messy thing with his tweezers. His long, nicotine-stained fingers shook as he stammered, ‘Commander Yu… not that I’m unwilling to do my best, but your son’s wound… My skills are not great, and I haven’t the proper medication… You must see someone more talented than I, Commander…’
Granddad bent over and stuck his face right up into Dr Zhang’s, his rheumy eyes boring into the man. ‘Where can I find someone more talented?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Tell me, where can I go? Should I take him to the Japanese?’
‘Commander,’ Zhang Xinyi defended himself, ‘that’s not what your humble servant meant… Your esteemed son is injured in a critical place, and the slightest slip could bring an end to your glorious line…’
‘I brought him here,’ Granddad said, ‘because I have faith in you. Do what you can.’
‘Since Commander Yu says so,’ Zhang Xinyi said, gritting his teeth, ‘I’ll do it.’
He soaked a cotton ball in the wine and cleaned the wound. The pain brought Father to. He tried to slide off the bed, but Granddad climbed up and held him down.
‘Commander Yu,’ Zhang Xinyi said, ‘we’ll have to strap him down.’
‘Douguan!’ Granddad said. ‘You’re my son, and I expect you to tough it out. Bite down hard!’
‘But, Dad,’ Father groaned, ‘it hurts…’
‘Tough it out!’ Granddad said sternly. ‘Think about Uncle Arhat!’
Father didn’t dare argue. Sweat covered his forehead.
Zhang Xinyi took out a needle and sterilised it in the wine before threading it. Then he began stitching the torn scrotum closed.
‘Sew that back inside!’ Granddad said.
Zhang Xinyi looked at the testicle lying in the open sorghum leaves on the wooden cabinet and said with embarrassment, ‘Commander Yu… it won’t do any good…’
‘Is it your intention to bring the Yu line to an end?’ Granddad asked glumly.
Large beads of sweat glistened on Dr Zhang’s gaunt face. ‘Commander Yu… think about it… Connecting blood vessels were severed. If I put it back in, it would still be dead.’
‘Sew the blood vessels together.’
‘Commander Yu, nobody in the world can reconnect blood vessels…’
‘Then… is that the end of it?’
‘That’s hard to say, Commander Yu. He might still be all right. The other one’s just fine. Maybe he’ll be all right with just one…’
‘You think so?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Damn it to hell!’ Granddad swore sorrowfully. ‘Bad things always happen to me!’
After the wound down below had been taken care of, Father’s face was attended to. Dr Zhang’s sweat-soaked clothing stuck to his back as he sat on a stool and panted breathlessly.
‘How much, Dr Zhang?’
‘Don’t worry about a fee, Commander Yu. As long as your esteemed son gets better, I consider myself lucky,’ he said weakly.
‘Dr Zhang, I, Yu Zhan’ao, am strapped at the moment. But someday I’ll thank you properly.’
He picked up Father and carried him out of Dr Zhang’s house.
Granddad looked down attentively at my father, who lay semiconscious in the shack, his face covered with gauze, with only his shifting eyes exposed. Dr Zhang had dropped by once to change his dressings. ‘Commander Yu,’ he said, ‘there’s no infection, and that’s a good sign.’
‘Tell me,’ said Granddad, ‘didn’t you say he’d be all right with just one?’
‘Commander, we can’t worry about that yet. Your esteemed son was bitten by a mad dog, and we’re lucky he’s still alive.’
‘He might as well be dead if that thing’s useless.’ Observing the murderous look in Granddad’s eyes, Dr Zhang mumbled something obsequious and slinked away.
Granddad picked up his gun and walked over to the marshland to sort out his chaotic thoughts. Mournful signs of autumn were all around: the ground was covered with frost, and there were sharp, icy brambles on the soggy marshland floor. Granddad was sick and very weak, his son was hovering between life and death, the family was broken up, some gone and some dead, the people were suffering, Wang Guang and Dezhi were dead, Gimpy had gone far away, the ulcer on the woman Liu’s leg was still oozing pus and blood, Blind Eye did nothing all day long but sit, the girl Beauty was too young to know anything, he was being pulled by the Jiao-Gao troops and squeezed by Pocky Leng’s troops, the Japanese saw him as their mortal enemy. He climbed to the top of a rise in the marshland to gaze out over the scattered, broken remains of human bodies and sorghum stalks, utterly disheartened. What had he got from decades of fighting and vying over women? Only the desolate scene in front of him.
The autumn of 1939 was one of the most difficult periods in Granddad’s life: his troops had been wiped out, his beloved wife had been killed, his son had been severely wounded, his home and the land around it had been torched, his body was racked with illness; war had destroyed nearly everything he owned. His eyes roamed over the corpses of men and dogs, a skein of threads getting more and more tangled wherever he looked, until it became a blur. Several times he drew his pistol, thinking of saying goodbye to this lousy, fucking world. But a powerful desire for revenge won out over cowardice. He hated the Japanese, he hated the troops of Pocky Leng and of Jiao-Gao.