With her face buried in his legs, he was filled with remorse, especially since Father was lurking fearfully behind the door. Despising himself for being so brutal, he bent down, lifted up Grandma, who was nearly unconscious, and carried her over to the kang. He decided not to go to Saltwater Gap until first thing the next morning. Let heaven watch over mother and daughter and keep them from harm!
Granddad rode his mule from the village to Saltwater Gap, a distance of only fifteen li, although it seemed like miles. Even though the black mule ran like the wind, it wasn’t fast enough for Granddad, who whipped it mercilessly with the hempen reins. Clods of earth flew in all directions behind the mule’s hooves, a thin layer of dust hung in the air above the fields, and the sky was filled with rivers of meandering black clouds; a peculiar odour drifted over on the wind from Saltwater Gap.
Oblivious to the sprawling bodies, human and animal, Granddad went straight to Second Grandma’s and rushed into the yard, his heart sinking as he saw the broken gate and smelled the stench of blood. He despaired when he saw the bedroom door, barely hanging on its hinges. Second Grandma lay on the kang in the same position she’d assumed when offering up her body to protect Little Auntie… Xiangguan was sprawled on the dirt floor in front of the kang, her face puddled in her own blood, her mouth open in a silent scream.
Granddad let out a roar, drew his pistol, and stumbled to the still-panting black mule, which he smacked on the rump with his pistol, wanting to fly to the county town to avenge the murders on the Japanese. He didn’t realise he’d taken the wrong road until he became aware of a patch of withered yellow reeds standing silently and solemnly in the morning sunlight. As he swung the mule around and headed off to town, he heard shouts behind him, but he kept beating the mule wildly without a backward glance. With each blow, the mule bucked, but the more it protested the angrier Granddad became. He was taking his fury out on the poor animal, which bucked and twisted so violently it finally threw its rider into last year’s sorghum.
Granddad climbed to his feet like a wounded beast and aimed his pistol at the narrow head of the lathered mule, which stood rigidly, its head lowered and its rump covered by goose-egg-sized lumps and streaks of dark blood. Granddad levelled the gun with his shaky hand. Just then our other mule came flying down the road out of the red sunrise, Uncle Arhat on its back. Its hide shone as though covered with a coat of gold dust.
Uncle Arhat, exhausted, jumped down off the mule and took a couple of tottering steps before nearly collapsing. Placing himself between Granddad and the black mule, he reached out and forced down the hand holding the pistol. ‘Zhan’ao,’ he said, ‘come to your senses!’
As he looked into the face of Uncle Arhat, Granddad’s seething anger turned into simmering sorrow, and tears slid down his face. ‘Uncle,’ Granddad said hoarsely, ‘both of them, mother and daughter… It’s horrible…’
Overcome by grief, he squatted on the ground. Uncle Arhat helped him up and said, ‘Manager Yu, a noble man can wait a decade to seek revenge. You should be back there taking care of arrangements so the dead can rest in peace.’
Second Grandma wasn’t dead. She gazed into the staring eyes of Granddad and Uncle Arhat as they stood beside her kang. Seeing her thick, heavy lashes, her dimming eyes, bloody nose, gnawed cheeks, and swollen lips made Granddad’s heart feel as though it had been cleaved by a knife, the searing pain mixed with an agitation he couldn’t drive away. Droplets of water began to ooze from the corners of her eyes, and her lips trembled slightly as she uttered a weak cry: ‘Elder brother…’
‘Passion…’ Granddad groaned.
Uncle Arhat backed silently out of the room.
Granddad leaned over the kang and dressed Second Grandma, who cried out when his hand brushed against her skin; she began to rant, just as she had years earlier when possessed by the weasel. He pinned her arms down to keep her from struggling, then slid her pants up over her dead, soiled legs.
Uncle Arhat walked in. ‘Manager Yu, I’ll borrow a wagon from next door… take mother and daughter back to get better…’
He searched Granddad’s face for a reaction. Granddad nodded.
Uncle Arhat picked up two comforters and ran outside, where he spread them out on the bed of the big-wheeled wagon. Granddad cradled Second Grandma, one arm under the nape of her neck, the other under the crook of her legs, as if she were a priceless treasure. He walked past the smashed gate out into the street, where Uncle Arhat waited with the wagon. He had hitched one of the mules to the wagon shafts; the poor mule whose rump Granddad had beaten bloody was tied to the rear crossbar. Granddad laid the now-screaming Second Grandma onto the bed of the wagon. He knew how badly she wanted to be strong, but he also knew she didn’t have the will.
Now that he’d taken care of Second Grandma, he turned to see Uncle Arhat, his weathered face streaked with an old man’s tears, walking up with the corpse of Little Auntie Xiangguan. Granddad’s throat felt as if it were in the grip of a pair of metal tongs. He coughed violently, racked by dry heaves. Gripping the axle to support himself, he looked skyward and saw in the southeast the enormous emerald fireball of the sun bearing down on him like a wildly spinning wagon wheel.
Taking the body of Little Auntie in his arms, he looked down into a face twisted by torment; two stinging tears fell to the ground.
After laying Little Auntie’s corpse next to Second Grandma, he lifted a corner of the comforter and covered the girl’s terror-streaked face.
‘Get up on the wagon, Manager Yu,’ Uncle Arhat said.
Granddad sat impassively on the railing, his legs dangling over the side.
Uncle Arhat flicked the reins and started out slowly, the axles of the wagon turning with difficulty. Long-drawn-out groans emerged from the dry, oil-starved sandalwood, followed by loud creaks that sounded like death rattles as the wagon bumped and rolled out of the village and onto the road heading towards our village, from which the scent of sorghum wine rose into the air. Although Second Grandma looked as if she had been rocked to sleep by the bumpy ride, her misty grey eyes remained open. Granddad put his finger under her nose to see if she was breathing. Weak, but he could feel it; that put him at ease.
A vast open field all around, a wagon of suffering passing through, the sky above as boundless as a dark ocean, black soil flat as far as the eye could see, sparse villages like islands adrift. As he sat on the wagon, Granddad felt that everything in the world was a shade of green.
The shafts of the wagon were much too narrow for our big mule, the spoked wheels much too light. Its belly was squeezed so uncomfortably between the shafts that it wanted to start running; but Uncle Arhat controlled the metal bit in its mouth, so it could only nurse a silent grievance and raise its forelegs as high as possible, as though it were prancing. Mumbled, sobbing curses tumbled from Uncle Arhat’s mouth: ‘Fucking swine… fucking inhuman swine… slaughtered the whole family next door, ripped open the daughter-in-law’s belly… Depraved… Unborn baby looked like a skinned rat… Potful of soupy yellow shit… Fucking swine…’