‘Cold?’ Passion asked disdainfully.
‘I’m hot!’ he fired back testily.
She filled two bowls with wine, kept one, and handed him the other.
After tossing their empty bowls onto the kang, they just gazed at each other. Two blue flames danced in the golden glow in the room. The golden flames singed his body, the blue flames singed his heart.
‘A noble man gets his revenge, even if it takes ten years!’ Granddad said icily as he shoved his pistol into its holster.
Black Eye straightened up and walked from the dike down to Grandma’s grave. He circled it once, kicked the earth, and sighed. ‘People live but a generation, and grass dies each autumn! Old Yu, the Iron Society is going to fight the Japanese. Join us!’
‘Join a superstitious society like yours?’ Granddad sneered.
‘Don’t get on your high horse! The Iron Society is protected by the gods. Heaven smiles on us and the people trust us. Being asked to join is an honour.’ Black Eye stamped his foot at the head of Grandma’s grave and continued: ‘Your black master here is willing to take you on for her sake.’
‘I don’t need your damned pity! One of these days, you and I are going to settle things, once and for all. Our business isn’t finished!’
‘You don’t scare me!’ Black Eye patted the revolver on his hip. ‘I know how to use one of these, too.’
A handsome young Iron Society soldier walked down from the dike and stayed his leader’s hand. With modest self-control, he said, ‘Commander Yu, the soldiers of the Iron Society have long respected you, and we’d be honoured if you joined us in our mission to keep the country whole. We must put aside our squabbles and drive off the Japanese! Individual scores can be settled later.’
Granddad was intrigued by the man, who reminded him of his own valiant young Adjutant Ren, who had died tragically while cleaning his gun. ‘Are you a member of the Communist Party?’ he asked derisively.
‘Not the Communist Party,’ the young man replied, ‘and not the Nationalist Party. I hate them both!’
‘I like your spirit!’ Granddad said approvingly.
‘They call me Five Troubles.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ Granddad said.
Father had been standing motionless beside Granddad for a long time, gazing curiously at the shaved foreheads of the Iron Society soldiers. That was their identifying mark, but its significance escaped him.
6
PASSION AND MY Granddad made wild love for three days and nights, until her already thick lips were puffy and swollen. Trickles of blood seeped into the cracks between her teeth, and when Granddad kissed her, the taste of blood nearly drove him crazy. The rain didn’t let up during those three days, and when the blue-and-gold light vanished from the room, the rustling of grey-green sorghum, the watery croaks of frogs, and the nibbling sounds of wild rabbits came on the air from the fields. The chilled, fetid air was saturated with a thousand smells.
When Granddad awoke on the morning of the fourth day, he looked at Passion lying beside him and discovered how gaunt and bony she had become; her closed eyes were rimmed with dark-purple circles, her thick lips were cracked and peeling. Hearing the loud crash of a house collapsing somewhere in the village, he quickly dressed and stumbled down off the kang, only to fall flat on his face; he was stunned. As he lay on the floor, his stomach rumbled from hunger. Managing to get to his feet, he called out weakly for the woman Liu. No answer. He went into the room that Passion shared with her, but the only thing lying on the kang mat was a green frog; no sign of Liu.
Returning to the room where he and Passion had spent the last three days and nights, he picked up several squashed slices of salted eggs and gobbled them down, shell and all. But they only whetted his appetite, so he went into the kitchen and dug through the cabinet, where he found four mildewed buns, nine salted eggs, two pieces of preserved bean curd, and three withered scallions; he gobbled everything down and finished it off with a ladleful of peanut oil.
The sun’s rays spread across the sorghum field like blood. Passion was still asleep, and Granddad looked at her body, sleek as the hide of the black mule. He poked her in the belly with his pistol, and she awoke with a smile, blue flames leaping out of her eyes; but he staggered out into the yard and looked up at the huge, round sun, which was like a damp, newborn infant, still covered with its mother’s blood. All around him, rain puddles shone bright red.
The wall separating the eastern and western compounds had come down. Uncle Arhat, the woman Liu, and the distillery hands ran outside to look at the sun.
‘Were you in there gambling all this time?’ Granddad asked.
‘Yes,’ Uncle Arhat answered, ‘for three days and three nights.’
Once the rain had stopped and the sky was clear, the water receded quickly, exposing a layer of soil as wet and shiny as grease. Grandma rode up on her mud-spattered black mule out of the gooey muck of the field, holding Father in her arms. As they picked up each other’s scent, the two mules, separated for so long, began to paw the ground, bob their heads, and bray loudly. When they were led up to the feeding trough, they nudged and nibbled each other intimately.
Embarrassed, Granddad took Father from Grandma, whose eyes were red and puffy; she smelled slightly of mildew. ‘Did you take care of everything?’ Granddad asked her.
‘We buried her this morning. Two more days of rain and the maggots would have got to her.’
‘That was quite a rain, all right. The bottom must have fallen out of the Milky Way.’ He turned to my father. ‘Douguan, say hello to your foster-dad.’
‘Foster-dad? That’s a “bloodless” relationship. Yours is “blooded”,’ Grandma chided him. ‘Hold him while I go inside and change.’
Passion walked outside with a brass basin to get some water. Granddad smiled knowingly, to which she responded with a look of annoyance.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked softly.
‘It’s all the fault of that damned rain!’ she snapped back.
‘What did you say to him?’ he heard Grandma ask Passion after she carried the water inside.
‘Nothing.’
‘Didn’t you say it was all the fault of that damned rain?’
‘No, no, I said that damned rain probably came because the bottom fell out of the Milky Way.’
Grandma uttered an ‘Oh!’ Granddad heard the water splashing in the brass basin.
Three days later, Grandma said she was going home to burn incense for Great-Grandma. When she and Father were seated on the black mule, she said to Passion, ‘I won’t be back tonight.’
That night the woman Liu went over to the eastern compound to gamble with the hired hands. Golden flames lit up Grandma’s room again.
After riding the mule back under the stars, she stood beneath the window and listened to what was going on inside. During the angry tirade that followed, Grandma gouged a dozen bloody lines in Passion’s face with her nails and slapped Granddad’s left cheek – hard. He just laughed. She raised her hand again, but before it reached his cheek it went limp, and she merely brushed his shoulder. He sent her reeling with a vicious slap.
Grandma burst out crying.
Granddad left, taking Passion with him.
7
THE IRON SOCIETY soldiers freed up one of their mounts so Granddad and Father could ride. Whipping his horse, Black Eye took the lead, while the glib Five Troubles, who hated the Communists and the Nationalists, trotted alongside Granddad. His dappled colt was very young and eager to catch up to the others, but Five Troubles kept a tight rein. Never a man to mince words, he looked back and said, ‘Commander Yu, I’ve been doing all the talking. You haven’t said anything.’