Grandma’s spirit tablet was draped with three feet of white bunting that lent it graceful solemnity. The Iron Society soldiers carefully placed it in the lesser canopy, then stood at attention beside the opening.
The funeral master shouted, ‘Great canopy!’
The drum-and-bugle corps struck up the music as a stately procession of sixty-four Iron Society soldiers carried in the large scarlet canopy, on which blue crowns the size of watermelons had been inlaid. The buzzing of the onlookers stopped, until the only sounds in the air were the sad strains of the musicians’ pipes and flutes and the anguished wails of mothers whose children had been trampled in the riot.
A solitary, repulsive horsefly flitted around Granddad’s injured arm, intent on getting at the clotted dark blood. It darted away when he swatted at it and flew around his head, buzzing angrily. The mournful sound of a brass gong seized his heart and called up a string of tangled memories from the fleeting past.
He was only eighteen when he murdered the monk, an act that forced him to flee his home and wander the four corners of the earth. By the time he returned to Northeast Gaomi Township at the age of twenty-two to become a bearer for the Wedding and Funeral Service Company, he had endured all the torments of the society of man, and had suffered the humiliation of sweeping streets in the red-and-black pants of a convict. With a heart as hard as fishbone and the physique of a gorilla, he had what it takes to become a formidable bandit. He carried with him always the humiliation of being slapped in the home of the Qi-family Hanlin scholar, an incident that occurred in Jiao City in 1920.
Golden rays of blazing light shone down on the musicians in the tilted bandboxes, their cheeks bouncing like little balls as they tooted away, sweat dripping from their faces. People stood on tiptoe to watch the funeral, and the light from hundreds of pairs of eyes settled like anxious moonbeams over real people and papier-mâché figurines inside the circle, over an ancient, resplendent culture, as well as a reactionary, backward way of thinking.
Father was wearing thick white knee-length mourning clothes, tied at the waist by a length of grey hemp, and a square mourning hat covered the shaved part of his scalp. The sour odour of sweat from the crowd and the smell of burned varnish from Grandma’s coffin fouled the air and made him weak-kneed. Grandma’s pitted coffin had grown hideous beyond belief: it lay on the ground, high at the front end and low at the rear, like a huge muddleheaded beast. Father had the feeling that at any moment it might stand up with a yawn and charge the black-massed crowds. In his mind the black coffin began to billow like a cloud, and Grandma’s remains, encased in thick wood and the dust of red bricks, seemed to form before his eyes. She had looked remarkably lifelike when Granddad dug up her grassy mound beside the Black Water River and raked up layer after layer of rotted sorghum stalks. Just as he would never forget the sight of Grandma looking up at the bright-red sorghum as she lay dying, he would also never forget the sight of her face as it came into view in her grave.
He relived these spectacular experiences as he carried out his complicated filial obligations to the deceased. The funeral master gave the order: ‘Move the coffin…’
The sixty-four soldiers who had borne the great canopy rushed up to the coffin like bees. ‘Heave!’ they shouted. It didn’t budge, as though it had taken root. Granddad swatted the fly away and stared at the men with scorn in his eyes. He signalled to the officer and said, ‘Get some cotton ropes. Without them you could struggle with the coffin until sunup and never get it into the canopy!’ The officer stared at Granddad with apprehension, but Granddad averted his eyes, looking at the Black Water River, which cut a swath through the black plain.
Two flagpoles, whose red paint had peeled off completely, stood in front of the Qi family home in Jiao City, the ancient, rotting wood standing as a symbol of the family’s status. The old man, a Hanlin scholar in the latter years of the Qing dynasty, was dead, and his sons and grandsons, who had shared the good life with him, made elaborate funeral preparations. Although everything was ready, they delayed their announcement of the date of interment. The coffin had been placed in a building at the rear of the vast family compound, and in order to move it out to the street they would have to trundle it through seven narrow gates. The managers of a dozen wedding-and-funeral-service companies had come to look at the coffin and the lay of the land, and all had left hanging their heads, even though the Qi family had promised an astonishingly high fee.
Then the news reached the Northeast Gaomi Township Wedding and Funeral Service Company. Payment of five hundred silver dollars to move a coffin was tempting bait to Granddad and his fellow bearers, and threw them into the confusion of a pining young woman who has been given the eye by a handsome young lad.
They went to see the manager, Second Master Cao, and swore they could put Northeast Gaomi Township on the map with this job, not to mention the five hundred in silver the company would make. Second Master Cao sat stiffly in his wooden armchair without so much as passing wind. The only movement was in his cold, intelligent eyes, and the only sound was the gurgling of the water pipe. ‘Second Master, it’s not for the money!’ Granddad and the others argued. ‘A man only lives once. Don’t let the world look down on the people of Northeast Gaomi Township!’ At this point Second Master Cao shifted his buttocks and slowly farted. ‘You men go and get some rest,’ he said. ‘If you botch the job and some of you are crushed to death, so what? But if you lose face for Northeast Gaomi Township and ruin my business, that’s another matter altogether. If you’re short of money, maybe I can help you out.’
With that, he closed his eyes. But the bearers began to clamour: ‘Second Master, don’t destroy our prestige while furthering the ambitions of others!’ Second Master Cao replied, ‘Don’t swallow a scythe if your stomach isn’t curved. You think earning that five hundred is going to be easy? Well, there are seven gates in the Qi compound, through which you have to carry a coffin filled with quicksilver! Do you hear me? I said quicksilver! Mull that over in your dog brains for a while, and figure out how much that coffin must weigh.’ He looked at his bearers out of the corner of his eye, then snorted derisively. ‘Go on, get out of here,’ he said. ‘Let the true heroes earn the real money! As for you, well, little men leave little records. Go out and earn your twenty or thirty yuan, and be happy to carry the paper-thin coffins of the poor!’
His comments went straight to the bearers’ hearts like poison arrows. Granddad strode forward before anyone else moved and said loudly, ‘Second Master Cao, working for someone as stupid as you is goddamned suffocating! A dogshit soldier is one thing, but a dogshit general is another! I quit!’
The hot-blooded bearers echoed his shouts. Second Master stood up, thumped Granddad hard on the shoulder, and said with genuine feeling, ‘Zhan’ao, now you’re a man! The seed of Northeast Gaomi Township. The Qi family got where it is by taking advantage of people like us, who earn their living as bearers. If you’ll work together and get that coffin out, the reputation of Northeast Gaomi Township is assured. You can’t buy glory for any amount of money. But don’t forget that, as the descendants of a Qing-dynasty Hanlin scholar, they follow strict decorum. This won’t be easy. If you can’t sleep tonight, stay up and figure out how you’re going to get through those seven gates.’
Before the bearers had left the office, two strangers walked in and announced that they were stewards from the Hanlin scholar’s home, come to enlist the services of the Northeast Gaomi Township bearers.