On this very spot, the Jiao-Gao forces had taken over twenty rifles from him, then vanished without a trace. There was no sign that they’d engaged the Japanese; he had heard only that they’d clashed with the troops of Pocky Leng. And Granddad suspected that it was the Jiao-Gao forces who had stolen the fifteen rifles he and Father had hidden in the dry well.
The woman Liu, who still had a pretty face even in her forties, came to the edge of the marshland to find Granddad, trying to comfort him with affectionate gazes at his silver hair. She touched his arm with her large, rough hand and said, ‘You shouldn’t be sitting here thinking like that. Let’s go back. As the ancients said, “Heaven never seals off all the exits.” You should concentrate on getting your health back by eating and drinking and breathing as much and as hard as you can…’
Her words touched him. He looked up at her kind face and tears began to fill his eyes. ‘Sister-in-law,’ he moaned.
She stroked his bent back. ‘Just look,’ she said, ‘a man barely forty reduced to this by his suffering.’
She supported him as they walked back together. He looked at her lame leg and asked with concern, ‘Is it any better?’
‘The ulcer has healed, but it’s thinner than the other one.’
‘It’ll fill out later.’
‘I don’t think Douguan’s injury is as serious as it looks.’
‘What do you think, will he be all right with only one?’
‘I think so. Single-stalk garlic is always the hottest.’
‘You really think so?’
‘My younger brother-in-law was born with only one, and look how many kids he’s got.’
Late at night, Granddad rested his weary head in the warmth of the woman Liu’s bosom as she stroked his bony frame with her large hands. ‘Can you do it again?’ she whispered. ‘Do you still have the strength? Don’t despair. Doesn’t it make you feel better to do it to me…?’
Granddad smelled the slightly sour, slightly sweet odour of the woman Liu’s breath and fell fast asleep.
Mother could not rid her mind of the picture of Dr Zhang picking up that purplish, flattened ball with his tweezers. He had examined it carefully before tossing it into a dish filled with dirty cotton balls and pieces of skin and dead flesh. Yesterday it had been Douguan’s jewel; today it lay in a dish of filthy debris. Mother, who was fifteen and had begun to understand a thing or two, felt both bashful and frightened. While she was taking care of Father, she kept staring at his gauze-wrapped penis; her heart fluttered, her cheeks burned, she blushed deep red.
Then she learned that the woman Liu was sleeping with Granddad.
‘Beauty,’ the woman Liu said to her, ‘you’re fifteen now, and no longer a child. Try playing with Douguan’s penis; if it gets hard, he’s your man.’
Mother was so embarrassed she nearly cried.
Father’s stitches were removed.
Mother slipped into the shack where Father was sleeping and tiptoed up to his kang, her cheeks burning. She knelt beside him and carefully pulled down his pants. In the light streaming into the room she looked at his injured, grotesque penis. The head, wild and proud, had an air of defiance. Timidly she held it in her sweaty hand and felt it gradually get warmer and thicker. It began to throb, just like her heart. Father woke up and squinted at her. ‘Beauty, what are you doing?’
Mother shrieked in alarm, jumped to her feet, and ran out, bumping smack into Granddad in the doorway.
Granddad grabbed her by the shoulders and demanded, ‘What’s wrong, Beauty?’
Mother burst out crying, wrenched free of Granddad’s grip, and ran away.
Granddad rushed into the shack, then rushed out again like a man crazed and ran straight to the woman Liu. He grabbed her breasts and squeezed them tightly. ‘Single-stalk garlic is the hottest!’ he said almost incoherently. ‘Single-stalk garlic is the hottest!’
Granddad fired three shots in the air, then brought his hands together in front of his chest and screamed: ‘Heaven has eyes!’
9
GRANDDAD TAPPED THE wall with his knuckles. Sunlight streaming in through the window reflected off the Gaomi statuette on the highly polished kang table. The window was covered by paper that Grandma had cut into strange, ingenious designs. In five days everything in the place would be reduced to ashes in a terrible battle. It was the tenth day of the eighth lunar month, 1939. Granddad had just returned from the highway, his arm in a sling and reeking of gasoline. He and Father had buried the Japanese machine gun with the twisted barrel and were searching the house for the money Grandma had hidden.
When the wall produced a hollow sound, Granddad smashed a hole in it with the butt of his pistol, then reached in and pulled out a red cloth packet. He shook it. It jingled. He poured its contents out onto the kang – fifty silver dollars.
Pocketing the silver dollars, he said, ‘Let’s go, son.’
‘Go where, Dad?’
‘Into town to buy bullets. It’s time to settle scores with Pocky Leng.’
The sun had nearly set when they reached the northern outskirts of the city. Snaking darkly through the sorghum fields, a black locomotive chugged along the tracks of the Jiao-Ping-Jinan railway line, belching puffs of dark smoke above the sorghum tips. Sunlight reflecting off the tracks nearly blinded them. The loud shriek of the whistle terrified Father, who squeezed Granddad’s hand.
Granddad led Father to a large grave mound, in front of which stood a white tombstone twice as tall as a man. The chiselled words had been rubbed so smooth they were barely discernible, and the area was surrounded by trees so thick it would have taken at least two people to wrap their arms around any one of them. The black canopy of leaves rustled even when there was no wind, and the grave itself was walled off, like a black island, by stalks of blood-red sorghum.
Granddad dug a little hole in front of the tombstone and tossed his pistol in. Father also threw his Browning in the hole.
After crossing the tracks, they looked up at the high gateway in the city wall, over which flew a Japanese flag, its rising sun and spokelike rays catching the red rays of the setting sun. Sentries stood on both sides of the gate, a Japanese to the left and a Chinese to the right. While the Chinese soldier questioned and searched locals entering town, his Japanese counterpart stood watching, his rifle ready.
Now that they’d crossed the tracks, Granddad hoisted Father up onto his back and whispered, ‘Pretend you’ve got a bellyache. Groan a little.’
Father groaned. ‘Like that, Dad?’
‘Put a little more feeling into it.’
They fell into a line of people heading into the city. ‘What village are you from?’ the Chinese soldier asked haughtily. ‘What’s your business in town?’
‘Fish Beach, north of town,’ Granddad answered meekly. ‘My son has cholera. I’m taking him to see Dr Wu.’
Father was so wrapped up in the conversation between Granddad and the sentry he forgot to groan. But he screamed in pain when Granddad pinched him hard on the thigh.
The sentry waved them past.
‘You little bastard!’ Granddad cursed angrily when they were safely out of earshot. ‘Why didn’t you groan?’
‘That pinch hurt, Dad, it hurt a lot!’
Granddad led Father down a narrow cinder-paved street towards the train station. The sun’s rays were dying out; the air was foul. Father saw that two blockhouses had been built alongside the run-down train station. Two Japanese soldiers with leashed police dogs marched back and forth. Dozens of civilians squatted or stood beyond the railing waiting for a train, and a Chinese in a black uniform was positioned on the platform, red lantern in hand, as an eastbound train sounded its whistle. The ground shook, and the police dogs barked at the coming train. A little old woman hobbled back and forth in front of the waiting passengers, hawking cigarettes and melon seeds. The train chugged into the station and ground its wheels to a halt. There were, Father saw, more than twenty cars behind the locomotive – ten boxcars, followed by ten or more flatcars filled with cargo covered carelessly by green tarpaulins. Japs standing on the train called out to their comrades on the platform.