It was nearly dusk by the time he reached the commune gate, whose steel ribs were as big around as his thumb; each was tipped with a barb. He could see through the spaces that the snow on the ground in the commune yard was black and filthy. People in new clothes and new caps, with large heads, fleshy ears, and greasy mouths, were scurrying back and forth. Some carried debristled pigs’ heads – the tips of the ears were blood-red – others carried silvery ribbonfish, and still others carried recently slaughtered chickens and ducks. He banged his dragon-head cane against the metal ribs, raising a loud clatter; but the people inside were too busy to give him anything but chilly glances before continuing on their way. He shouted angrily, tearfully, ‘Your honour… leader… I’ve been treated unjustly… I’m starving…’
A young man with three fountain pens in his coat pocket walked over and said coolly, ‘What’s all the racket about, old-timer?’
Seeing all those pens in the young man’s pocket, he assumed he’d caught the attention of a ranking official, so he knelt down in the snow, grabbed hold of two metal ribs in the gate, and said tearfully, ‘Eminent leader, the production-brigade branch secretary has held back my grain rations. I haven’t eaten for three days, I’m starving, eighteen stabs by the Japs didn’t kill me, now I’m going to starve to death…’
‘What village are you from?’ the young man asked him.
‘Don’t you know me, eminent leader?’ he asked. ‘I’m Eighteen Stabs Geng.’
The young man laughed. ‘How am I supposed to know you’re Eighteen Stabs Geng? Go home and see your brigade leader. The commune organisations are on holiday.’
Old Geng banged on the metal gate for a long time, but no one else paid him any attention. Soft yellow light shone down from the windows in the compound, in front of which feathery snowflakes swirled silently. Firecrackers exploded somewhere in the village, reminding him that it was time to send off the Kitchen God to make his report in heaven. He wanted to go home, but as he took his first step he fell headlong to the ground, as though shoved. When his face hit the snow, it felt amazingly warm, reminding him of his mother’s bosom – no, it was more like his mother’s womb. His eyes were closed in the womb, where he swam in complete freedom, with no worries about food, clothes, anything. He was indescribably happy; the absence of hunger and cold brought him extreme joy.
The golden rays of light from the commune windows and the fiery-red winter-sweet blossoms at the home of the branch secretary lit up the world like rapidly licking flames, and the glare blinded him; snowflakes swirled like gold and silver foil as each family sent off its Kitchen God on a paper horse to soar up to heaven. With all that light streaming down on him, his body felt hot and dry, as though he’d caught fire. He quickly stripped off his jacket – hot. Then he took off his padded pants – hot. Took off his padded shoes – hot. Took off his felt cap – hot. Naked, just as he had emerged from his mother’s womb – hot. He lay down in the snow, the snow scalded his skin; he rolled around in the snow – hot, so hot. He gobbled up some snow, it burned his throat as though it were filled with sunbaked pebbles of sand. Hot! So hot! Rising from the snow, he grabbed the metal ribs of the gate, but they scalded him, and he couldn’t pull his hands off the gate. The last thing he wanted to shout was: Hot! So hot!
The young man with the pens in his pocket came out early the next morning to shovel snow. When he casually raised his head and glanced at the gate, his face paled with fright. What he saw was the old man from last night, who’d called himself Eighteen Stabs Geng, stark naked, his hands stuck to the gate, like the crucified Jesus. His face had turned purple, his limbs were spread out, his staring eyes were fixed on the commune compound; hard to believe he was a lonely old man who had died of starvation. The young man made a careful count of the scars on his body. There were eighteen, all right, no more, no less.
8
POCKY CHENG WAS finally set free by the Japs after leading them to all the village sandal workshops, each of which they blew up. ‘Are there any more?’ Chestnut Wool Cap asked sternly.
‘No,’ he asserted, ‘honest, there aren’t.’
Chestnut Wool Cap looked over at the Japanese, who nodded. ‘Get the hell out of here!’ he said, Cheng backed up a dozen or so steps, bowing and scraping, then nodding over and over, as he spun around to get out of there as fast as his legs would carry him. But they were so rubbery, and his heart was pounding so hard, that he froze on the spot. The bayonet wound in his chest throbbed, and the mess in his crotch had turned sticky and cold. As he leaned against a tree to catch his breath, he heard ghostly sobs and screams from the houses around him. His legs buckled as he slid to the ground, his back scraping the dry, brittle bark of the tree. Clouds of smoke filled the sky above the village, the residue of exploding hand grenades, I suppose.
After lobbing hundreds of black muskmelon grenades through overhead windows and doors, the Japanese encircled the sandal workshops while muted explosions tore them apart, making the ground tremble as thick smoke rose from the windows, accompanied by the pitiful screams of those who had survived the blasts. The Japanese soldiers then stuffed straw into the windows, muting the shrieks inside until you had to strain to hear them. With Pocky Cheng as their guide, the Japanese blew up twelve workshops. He knew that three-fourths of the village men made straw sandals and slept in those workshops, so there was little chance any of them could have survived. The enormity of his crime hit him suddenly. Without his lead, the Japanese would never have found the workshop in the remote corner of the eastern section of the village; it was one of the biggest, employing twenty or thirty men, who spent their nights there weaving sandals and joking with one another. The Japanese lobbed over forty grenades into that workshop alone, blasting the roof off the building, which, following the last explosion, became a flattened graveyard. A single willow pole that had supported the roof stood alone in the mud like a rifle barrel pointing to the crimson sky.
He was afraid. He was racked with guilt. All around, familiar, newly dead faces denounced him. He began to defend himself: The Japs forced me at bayonet-point. If I hadn’t led the way, they’d have found the workshops on their own. The murdered villagers glanced at one another in stupefaction, then left quietly. As he gazed at their mangled bodies, he felt like a man soaking in an icy pool, freezing inside and out.
After dragging himself home, Pocky Cheng discovered his beautiful wife and thirteen-year-old daughter lying in the yard, naked, their intestines spread out around them. Everything turned black, and he keeled over. He felt dead one minute, alive the next. He was running after something, heading southwest. A red oval cloud floated in the rosy southwest sky, where his wife, his daughter, and hordes of villagers were standing, men and women, young and old. He ran as though his feet had wings, chasing the slow-moving cloud, his face raised skyward. The people in the cloud spat at him, even his wife and daughter. He hastily defended himself, but the spittle continued to rain down on him. He watched the cloud rise higher and higher in the sky, until it turned into a bright, blood-red dot.
For his beautiful, fair-skinned young wife, marrying a man with pockmarks had been a disgrace. But at the village inn he played his woodwind every night, making it weep and cry, and nearly breaking her heart. It was his woodwind she’d married. Over and over he played it, until she grew tired of it; and his pocked face, which had repulsed her from the very beginning, now became unbearable. So she ran off with a fabric peddlar, but Pocky Cheng went after her and dragged her back spanking her until her buttocks were swollen and puffy: a battered wife, kneaded dough. From then on, she put her heart and soul into domesticity. First she had a little girl, then a little boy, who was now eight. Regaining his senses, Pocky went looking for the boy, and found him, stuffed in the water vat, head down, feet up, his body as rigid as a pole.