The slap and a half from Grandma had created a barrier between them, like a cruel river. ‘Ass!’ she’d cursed him. ‘Swine!’ An angry scowl had underscored her outburst as she stood there, hands on hips, back bent, neck thrust forward, a trickle of bright-red blood running down her chin. The awful sight had thrown his heart into confusion.
In all his years, no woman had ever cursed him as viciously as that, and certainly no woman had ever slapped him. It wasn’t that he felt no remorse over his affair with Passion, but the humiliating verbal and physical abuse had driven that remorse out of his heart, and self-recrimination had been supplanted by a powerful drive to avenge himself.
Emboldened by a sense of self-righteousness, he’d gone to live with Passion in Saltwater Gap, some fifteen li distant. After buying a house, he led what even he knew was a troubled life, discovering in Passion’s deficiencies Grandma’s virtues. Now that he’d narrowly escaped death, his legs had carried him back to this spot, and he wanted to rush into that compound and revive the past; but the sound of those curses erected a barrier that cut him off from the road ahead.
Granddad dragged his exhausted body to Saltwater Gap in the middle of the night, where he stood in front of the house he’d bought two years earlier and looked up at the late-night moon high in the southwestern sky. Passion’s vigorous, slender body floated in front of his eyes, and as he thought about the golden flames ringing her body and the blue flames issuing from her eyes, a tormenting nostalgia made him forget his mental and physical anguish. He pulled himself over the wall and jumped into the compound.
Keeping a rein on his feelings, he knocked on the window frame and cried out softly: ‘Passion… Passion…’
Inside, a muffled cry of alarm, followed by the sound of intermittent sobs.
‘Passion, can’t you tell who it is? It’s me, Yu Zhan’ao!’
‘Brother… dear brother! Scare me to death, but I’m not afraid! I want to see you even if you’re a ghost! You’ve come to me, I, I’m deliriously happy… You didn’t forget me after all… Come in… Come in…’
‘Passion, I’m not a ghost. I’m still alive, I escaped!’ He pounded on the window. ‘Did you hear that? Could a ghost make sounds like that on your window?’
Passion began to wail.
‘Don’t cry,’ Granddad said. ‘Somebody will hear you.’
He walked over to the door, but before he got there, the naked Passion was in his arms.
For two months, Granddad didn’t step outside. He lay on the kang, staring blankly at the papered ceiling. Passion reported talk on the street about the bandits of Northeast Gaomi Township. When he could no longer bear his indelible memories of the tragedy, he filled the air with the sound of grinding teeth. All those opportunities to take that old dog Nine Dreams Cao’s life, yet he had spared him. His thoughts turned to my grandma. Her relationship with Nine Dreams Cao had been a major factor in his being duped, so his hatred for Nine Dreams Cao carried over to her as well. Who knows, maybe they had conspired to lead him into a trap. The news Passion brought made this seem likely.
One day, as Passion was massaging his chest, she said, ‘Dear brother, you may not have forgotten her, but it didn’t take her long to forget you. After they took you away on the train, she went with Black Eye, the leader of the Iron Society, and has lived with him in Saltwater Gap for months.’ The sight of Passion’s insatiable dark body gave birth to repugnance, and Granddad’s thoughts returned to that other body, as fair as virgin snow. He remembered, again, that sultry afternoon when he had stretched her out on his straw rain cape in the dense shadows of the sorghum field.
Granddad rolled over. ‘Is my pistol still here?’
Passion wrapped her arms around him. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked fearfully.
‘I’m going to kill those dog bastards!’
‘Zhan’ao! Dear brother, you can’t keep killing people! Think how many you’ve killed already!’
He shoved her away. ‘Shut up!’ he snarled. ‘Give me my gun!’
She began to sob as she ripped open the seam of the pillow and removed his pistol.
With Father in front of him, Granddad followed Five Troubles on the black horse. Even after gazing for a long time at the dull grey surface of the Salty Water River and the vast white alkaline plains stretching from its bank, his excitement from their stirring conversation still hadn’t abated; yet he couldn’t stop thinking about his fight with Black Eye on the bank of the river.
With his pistol under his arm, he rode a huge braying donkey all morning. When he reached Saltwater Gap, he tied his donkey to an elm tree at the village entrance to let it gnaw on the bark, then pulled his tattered felt cap down over his eyebrows and strode into the village. Saltwater Gap was a large village, but Granddad walked straight towards a row of tall buildings without asking directions. Winter was just around the corner, and a dozen chestnut trees with a few stubborn yellow leaves were bent before the wind. Though not strong, it cut like a knife.
He slipped into the compound in front of the tiled buildings, where the Iron Society was meeting. On the wall of a spacious hall with a brick floor hung a large amber-coloured painting of a strange old man riding a ferocious, mottled tiger. A variety of curious objects rested on an altar beneath the painting – a monkey claw, the skull of a chicken, a dried pig gallbladder, a cat’s head, and the hoof of a donkey. Incense smoke curled upward. A man with a ring of moles around one eye was sitting on a thick, circular sheet of iron, rubbing the shaved dome of scalp above his forehead with his left hand and covering the crack in his ass with his right. He was chanting loudly: ‘Amalai amalai iron head iron arm iron spirit altar iron tendon iron bone iron cinnabar altar iron heart iron liver iron lung altar raw rice forged into iron barrier iron knife iron gun no way out iron ancestor riding iron tiger urgent edict amalai amalai amalai…’
Granddad recognised the man as Northeast Gaomi Township’s infamous half-man, half-demon, Black Eye.
His chant finished, Black Eye stood up and kowtowed three times to the iron ancestor seated on his tiger. Then he returned to his sheet of iron, sat down, and raised his fists, all ten fingernails turned in and hidden from view. He nodded towards the Iron society soldiers, who reached up with their left hands to their shaved scalps and covered their asses with their right, closed their eyes, and raised their voices to repeat Black Eye’s chant. Their sonorous shouts filled the hall with demonic airs. Half of Granddad’s anger vanished – his plan had been to murder Black Eye, but his loathing for the man was being weakened by reverence and awe.
After completing their chant, the Iron Society soldiers kowtowed to the old demon on his tiger mount, then formed two tight ranks in front of Black Eye. Granddad had heard that the Iron Society soldiers ate raw rice, and now he watched as each of them took a bowl of it from Black Eye and gobbled it down. Then, one by one, they walked up to the altar and picked up the monkey claw, mule hoof, and chicken skull to rub on their shaved scalps.
The white sun was streaked with red by the time the ceremony was completed, when Granddad fired a shot at the large painting, putting a hole in the face of the old demon on his tiger. The soldiers broke ranks at the sound of gunfire, took a moment to get their bearings, then rushed out and surrounded Granddad.
‘Who are you? You’ve got the nerves of a thief!’ Black Eye thundered.
Granddad lifted his tattered felt cap with the barrel of his smoking gun. ‘Your venerable ancestor, Yu Zhan’ao!’