‘Number Six, Chunsheng, you two follow me,’ Pocky whispered.
He removed the bag of hand grenades to lighten his load. After tucking one grenade in his waistband, he handed the bag to a tall soldier and said, ‘When we’ve made it to the gate, bring this to me.’
With stars spreading their weak light over the ground and a dozen or so lit carriage lanterns hanging from the barracks, it looked like dusk in the compound. Two puppet sentries patrolled the gateway, casting long shadows on the ground. An ageing black dog ran out from behind the piles of bricks and stones, followed by a white dog, then a spotted one. They snarled and rolled on the ground, their profiles merging as they approached the gateway. In the shadows of a woodpile no more than a dozen paces from the gate, the dogfight turned nasty. From a distance it looked like three mutts fighting over a choice morsel of food.
Commander Little Foot Jiang watched the masterful performance conceived by Pocky Cheng, and was reminded of the benumbed, cowardly man who had shown up to join the army, snivelling at the drop of a hat, like a useless old woman. Pocky and his comrades continued their dogfight ruse in the shadows as the distracted sentries stood shoulder to shoulder and listened. One picked up a rock and threw it at the dogs. ‘Mangy damned mutts!’
Pocky Cheng yelped like a dog hit by a rock, and Commander Jiang had to stifle a laugh, it sounded so much like the real thing. The Jiao-Gao soldiers had been practising their barking since the assault plan for Ma Family Hamlet was first drawn up. Pocky Cheng, a Peking-opera buff and woodwind player, had wonderful breath control and a loud, booming voice, not to mention a lively tongue; he easily became the regiment’s champion ‘dog’.
Growing impatient, the sentries moved cautiously up to the woodpile, where the dogs were really getting into it. Rifles ready, bayonets fixed, they were only three or four steps from the woodpile when the dogs stopped barking and began to whine, as though afraid.
The sentries advanced another slow, cautious step.
Pocky Cheng, Number Six, and Chunsheng jumped up, fur shimmering in the dim yellow glow, and charged the sentries like bolts of lightning. Pocky Cheng smashed his grenade down on the head of one; Number Six and Chunsheng buried their bayonets in the other’s chest. Both crashed to the ground like sacks of cement.
The Jiao-Gao soldiers looked like a frenzied pack of dogs as they charged the enemy barracks. Pocky Cheng, who had retrieved his bag of hand grenades, ran like a madman towards the tiled buildings.
Rifle fire, exploding grenades, shouts, and the screams of Japs and their puppet allies shattered the winter calm at Ma Family Hamlet. The local dogs were barking like crazy.
Pocky Cheng lobbed twenty grenades into a window, and the pathetic cries of the Japanese inside reminded him of the day years earlier when they had hurled their grenades into the sandal workshops. But instead of satisfying his sense of vengeance, this re-enacted scene caused him such anguish that his heart felt as though it were being sliced open.
This was the most intense battle fought by the Jiao-Gao regiment since its formation, and it ended with the most brilliant and complete victory anywhere in the Binhai region, for which a special committee bestowed a commendation upon the entire regiment. The dog soldiers were caught up in wild joy, until two occurrences caused them great distress: First, the store of weapons and ammunition that fell into their hands after the battle was allocated to the Binhai Independent Battalion. Commander Jiang knew that the special committee’s decision was the right one, but his soldiers grumbled with resentment, and when battalion soldiers came to collect the weapons, looks of shame covered their faces. Second, Pocky Cheng, who had so distinguished himself in the battle at Ma Family Hamlet, was found hanging from a tree at the head of the village. All the evidence pointed to suicide. From the back he looked like a dog, but from the front a man.
9
THERE WERE NO more screams from Second Grandma after Grandma washed her body with hot water. A gentle smile graced her scarred and battered face the day long, but blood kept flowing down below. Granddad called in every doctor in the area, and all sorts of medicinal potions were tried.
The last doctor was someone Uncle Arhat brought over from the town of Pingdu, a man in his eighties with a silvery beard, a broad fleshy forehead, and long curved fingernails. A comb made from a bull’s horn, a silver ear pick, and a bone toothpick hung from the buttons of his mandarin robe. Granddad watched him lay a long finger on Second Grandma’s pulse, and when he was finished he crossed her left hand over her right and said, ‘Make preparations for the funeral!’
Granddad and Grandma felt miserable, but they saw the old doctor out and did as he said. She stayed up to make a set of burial clothes, while he sent Uncle Arhat to the carpentry shop for a coffin.
The next day, with the help of neighbour women, Grandma dressed Second Grandma in the newly made clothes. No resentment showed on Second Grandma’s face as she lay stiffly on the kang in a red silk jacket, blue satin pants, a green silk shirt, and red satin embroidered slippers, a gentle smile on her face, her chest rising and falling, frailly yet tenaciously.
At noon Father spotted a cat as black as ink pacing the ridge of the roof and letting out blood-curdling screeches. He hurled a broken piece of brick at the cat, which sprang out of the way, landed on one of the roof tiles, and pranced off.
When it was time to light the lamps, the distillery hands walked up with the coffin and laid it down in the yard. Grandma lit a soybean-oil light with three wicks, because it was a special moment. Everyone stood around waiting anxiously for Second Grandma to breathe her last. Father hid behind the door staring at her ears, which in the lamplight looked like amber, and were just as transparent, evoking a sense of mystery that danced in brilliant colour in his heart. At that moment he knew that the black cat was stepping on a roof tile again, that its black eyes were flashing, and that it was rending the darkness with obscene screeches. His scalp burned, his hair seemed to stand up like porcupine quills.
Suddenly Second Grandma’s eyes snapped open; and although her gaze was fixed, her lids fluttered, her cheeks twitched, and her thick lips quivered – once, twice, three times – followed by a screech more hideous than that of a cat in heat. Father noticed that the golden light from the soybean-oil lamp had turned as green as onion leaves, and in that flickering green light, the look on Second Grandma’s face was no longer human.
‘Little sister,’ Grandma said, ‘little sister, what’s wrong?’
A stream of epithets poured from Second Grandma’s mouth: ‘Son of a whore, I’ll never forgive you! You can kill my body, but you can’t kill my spirit! I’ll skin you alive and rip the tendons right out of your body!’
It wasn’t Second Grandma’s voice, Father was sure of that, but the voice of someone well over fifty.
Grandma shrank from the force of Second Grandma’s curses.
Second Grandma’s eyelids fluttered as rapidly as lightning; one minute she was screaming, the next cursing, the sound shaking the rafters and filling the room. Her breath was glacial. Father saw that from the neck down her body was as stiff as a board, and he wondered where she found the strength to scream.
Not knowing what to do, Granddad told Father to summon Uncle Arhat from the eastern compound. Even there you could hear the terrifying screams.
Uncle Arhat walked into the room, glanced at Second Grandma, and quickly led Granddad outside by the sleeve. Father followed them. ‘Manager Yu,’ he said softly, ‘she’s already dead. She must be possessed.’
‘He’d barely got the words out when he heard her curse him loudly from inside: ‘Arhat Liu, you son of a whore! No easy death for you! Skin you alive, rip the tendons out of your body, cut off your prick…’