‘What kind of potion?’ Black Eye asked.
‘Fast-action abortion medicine,’ the physician said with a cunning smile. ‘Even if you’re made of bronze, iron, or steel, one packet of this medicine, taken in three portions, will drive the baby right out of you. Money-back guarantee.’
‘You goddamned immoral bastard!’ Black Eye lashed out.
‘There’s more, there’s more!’ He reached into his saddlebags and held up another packet as he chanted, ‘A dog’s penis has the emperor, a goat’s penis has the minister. Some rice wine and crown-prince ginseng, the bark of eucommia, some chain fern and ursine seal, the tips of March bamboo shoots as a base.’
‘What’s it good for?’ Black Eye asked.
‘Impotence. Whether you’re as wispy as a silkworm’s thread or as soft as fluffed cotton, one packet, taken in three portions, and you’ll have a rod of steel that’ll get you through the night. Money-back guarantee.’
Black Eye rubbed his shiny forehead with his hand and smiled lewdly. ‘You’re a goddamn wild man engaged in inhuman business!’ he said, and asked to see the potion.
The physician handed Black Eye something that looked like a withered branch. He held it under his nose and sniffed it. ‘You call this a goddamn dog’s penis?’
‘The genuine article, the penis of a black dog!’
‘Old Yu, take a look and tell me if this isn’t the dried root of an ordinary tree.’ Black Eye handed it to Granddad, who held it up to a candle and examined it through squinting eyes.
The physician suddenly began to quake, and his bristly chin twitched noticeably. Father stopped playing with his marble, his heart racing as he watched the physician shrink in front of his eyes.
Suddenly the physician thrust his left hand into his saddlebags and caught everyone by surprise by spraying a packet of medicine in Granddad’s face. Something in his left hand flashed – a green-tinted dagger. Everyone stood stupefied as the physician, agile as a black cat, stabbed at Granddad’s throat. But Granddad had leaped to his feet and instinctively covered his neck with his arm, which took a long gash from the physician’s dagger. Granddad kicked over the table, whipped out his pistol, and got off three quick shots. But since his eyes were stinging from the medicine powder, his shots went wild, one hitting the tent, another slamming into the heavily varnished coffin, and ricocheting out of the tent opening, the third shattering the mule’s right foreleg. It brayed pitifully as a stream of white and red liquid spurted from its smashed kneecap. Tormented by pain, the mule crashed into the paper snow pines and snow willows, which rustled loudly as they crumpled and fell to the ground. The candles around the coffin were sent flying, their glowing wicks and hot wax quickly igniting the paper and straw and immersing Grandma’s momentarily gloomy spirit table in a burst of radiance. The tinder-dry sides of the tent curled towards the tongues of flame, as Iron Society soldiers came to life and converged on the tent.
Amid the growing conflagration, the physician, whose skin shone like ancient bronze, rushed Granddad again with his dagger. Black Eye, the trace of a gloating smile on his lips, stood off to the side but didn’t fire his pistol. Father whipped out his Luger, cocked it, and fired a single round, striking the physician squarely in his right shoulder. His arm sagged, and the dagger dropped harmlessly onto the table. Father cocked his pistol again and a fresh bullet entered the chamber. Granddad shouted, ‘Hold your fire!’
Bang, bang, bang. Black Eye’s pistol barked three times, and the physician’s head exploded like a hardboiled egg. Granddad glared at Black Eye.
Iron Society soldiers swarmed into the tent, where the fire was raging. The mule, shrouded in flames, writhed on the ground.
A mad dash for the opening.
‘Put out the fire!’ Black Eye screamed. ‘Hurry! Fifty million tigermount bills to whoever saves the coffin!’
The spring rains had only recently passed, and the pond at the head of the village was filled with water. Together the Iron Society soldiers and common folk who had come for the funeral pushed the red billowing cloud of the burning tent to the ground, and put out the fire.
Green smoke rose from the seared coffin. In the muted light of the dying flames, it seemed as sturdy as ever. The curled body of the mule lay beside it, the stench of its scorched hide filling the air.
2
THE DATE FOR Grandma’s funeral wasn’t changed in spite of the unforeseen events of the night before. The old Iron Society groom bandaged Granddad’s injury as best he could, while Black Eye watched with a mocking look and recommended postponing the funeral. Granddad emphatically rejected the suggestion. He didn’t sleep a wink that night; he sat on a bench without moving, his bloodshot eyes half open, his cold hand resting on the rough Bakelite handle of his pistol, as though he were glued to the spot.
Father lay on a grass mat and stared at Granddad until he drifted off into a troubled sleep. He woke before daybreak and cast a furtive glance at Granddad, intransigent in the flickering candlelight. His arm was stained with the dark dried blood that had oozed out from under the bandage. Not daring to say anything, Father closed his eyes again until the five funeral musicians hired for the event ran up against the envious local musicians, and their battle of horns disrupted everyone’s sleep. Father’s nose began to ache; scalding tears flowed from his eyes and ran into his ear. Here I am, he was thinking, nearly sixteen already. I wonder if these turbulent days will ever end. He looked at his father’s bloody shoulder and waxen face, and a feeling of desolation that didn’t suit his tender years entered his heart.
A lone village rooster announced the coming day, and a predawn breeze carried the acrid smell of spring into the tent, where it caused the candles to flicker. The voices of early risers were now discernible; warhorses tethered to nearby willows began pawing the ground and snorting; Father curled up comfortably, and thought of Beauty, who would one day be my mother, and the tall, robust woman Liu, who should rightfully be considered my third grandma. They had disappeared three months earlier, when Father and Granddad had gone for training with the Iron Society to a remote little outpost south of the railway tracks; when they returned, their huts were empty and their loved ones gone. The sheds they’d thrown up in the winter of 1939 were covered with cobwebs.
As soon as the red morning sun had made its entrance, the village came to life. Food peddlars raised their voices to attract customers, as the steamy, tantalising odours of buns in ovens, won tons in pots, and flatcakes in skillets began to waft through the air. A pockfaced peasant argued with a peddlar of buns, who refused to accept North Sea currency; the peasant had none of the Iron Society’s tiger-mount currency. By then twenty of the little buns had already found their way into the peasant’s stomach. ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ he said. ‘Take it or leave it.’ The crowd urged the peddlar to accept the North Sea currency, whose value would be restored as soon as the Jiao-Gao regiment fought its way back. He did, and moved on, raising his voice: ‘Buns! Meat-filled buns! Fresh from the oven!’
The tent showed the effects of the raging fire of the night before. Iron Society soldiers had dragged the physician and his scrawny mule the fifty paces or so to the inlet, where the stench of their scorched bodies attracted scavenger birds. The area around Grandma’s coffin had been swept clean of torn canvas, and the occasional unbroken wineglass lying in the cinders had been smashed by rakes. Grandma’s coffin shone in the early-morning light, hideous and scary. The deep-scarlet surface, once so sombre and mysterious, had been eaten away by flames, and the thick varnish had melted and split, leaving a maze of deep cracks. The coffin was so enormous that, as my father stood at its sweeping head, it seemed like the tallest thing in the world, and he had trouble breathing. He recalled how the coffin had been seized, and how its owner, an old man who must have been at least a hundred and still wore his white hair in a little queue, had refused to let go of the front edge: