As the fog expanded it became thin, transparent, and buoyant. From within its wavering, crisscrossing, white silk bands emerged the tips of the underbrush, the creeping nets of vines, treetops in the forest, the rigid face of the village, and the ash blue teeth of the sea. The fiery red faces of sorghum stalks often shone through the fog. But as the fog thinned out, the frequency of sorghum faces lessened. The brutal Japanese landscape mercilessly filled the gaps in the fog, and forced out Granddad's dreams of his homeland. Eventually the haze retreated to the wooded valley.
The red glow of an enormous ocean filled Granddad's eyes. Ash blue waves licked lazily at the sandy beach, and a blood-red ball of fire burned its way out of the depths of the ocean.
Granddad could not recall, nor was there any way he could recall, how many times he had watched the dripping wet sun leap out of the water. The blood-red fire of hope, so hot it made him tremble, raged in his heart. A vast stretch of sorghum formed neat ranks in the ocean. The stalks were the erect bodies of his sons and daughters, the leaves were their arms waving in the air, sabers glinting in the sunlight. The Japanese ocean became a sea of sorghum, the undulations of the ocean were the rising and falling chests of sorghum stalks, and the coursing tide was sorghum blood.
According to an entry in the historical records of Hokkaido's Sapporo city, Yoshikawa Sadako, a peasant woman from the nearby village of Kiyota, went out to a rice paddy in the valley on the morning of October 1, 1949, where she encountered a savage who violated her. A Japanese friend of mine, Mr. Nagano, helped me locate this material and translated it into Chinese for me. The so-called savage was my granddad, and my purpose in citing this material is to pin down the time and place in which an important event in my granddad's narrative occurred. In the Mid-Autumn Festival of 1943, he was captured and later taken to Hokkaido as a conscript laborer. In the spring of 1944, when mountain flowers were in full bloom, he escaped from a labor camp and began his life in the mountains as part man and part beast. By October 1, 1949, the day the People's Republic was proclaimed, he had spent more than two thousand days and nights in the forest. Now the morning I'm describing, aside from the great fog that made it easy but more gut-wrenching for him to recall the fervent life he and his loved ones had led back home, has no particular significance. What happened later that afternoon is another story.
It was a typical Hokkaido morning. The fog had dispersed and the sun hung high above the sea and the forest. A few dazzling white sails drifted slowly on the water. From a distance they didn't seem to be moving at all. Strips of brown seaweed lay drying in the sun on the sand. Japanese fishermen gathering the seaweed wriggled in the shallow water, like so many large brown beetles. Ever since suffering at the hands of a gray-bearded fisherman, my granddad was filled with hatred for the Japanese, whether they wore cruel or kind faces. Now when he went down to the village at night to steal seaweed and dried fish, he no longer experienced the worthless sense of guilt. He went so far as to rip up the fishing nets drying on the beach with a pair of rusty old scissors.
The sun baked down. Even the wispy fog in the valley had dissipated, and the ocean was turning white. On trees all over the mountain, large red and yellow leaves mingled with the vibrant green of pine and cedar, like tongues of fire. Sprinkled amid the deep reds and greens were columns of pure white – the bark of birch trees. Another lovely autumn day had quietly arrived. After the autumn came the severe winters, those bitter Hokkaido winters, the kind that forced Granddad to hibernate like a bear. Generally speaking, there was more fat on his body when purple flowers that were the sign of autumn bloomed on the mountain. The prospects for this particular winter were good, mainly because three days earlier he had secured this cave: open to the sun, back to the wind, it was a good and safe place to hide. His next step was to store up food for the winter. He planned to go out on ten separate nights to bring back twenty partially dried bundles of seaweed. If his luck held out, he might also be able to steal a few dried fish or potatoes.
The stream was not far from his cave, which meant he wouldn't need to worry about leaving prints in the snow, since he climbed over vines and across creepers. This would be a good winter, thanks to the cave. It was his lucky day, and he was happy. Naturally, he could not know that on that day all China quivered with excitement. As he thought about his good prospects, his son – my father – was riding a mule, wearing a new army uniform, a rifle slung over his back. He and his unit had assembled under a locust tree at the foot of the Imperial City's eastern wall, where they waited to take part in the glorious parade at Tiananmen.
Sunlight filtered through leaves and branches into Granddad's cave and fell on his hands. His fingers were the color of metal, and gnarled like talons. Scaly flakes covered the backs of his hands, and his fingernails were chipped and broken. The backs of his hands were hot and itchy from the sun. Still somewhat sleepy, he closed his eyes, and as he dozed he heard the rumble of gunfire off in the distance. The competing brilliance of gold and red lights formed a column of a thousand fine steeds, like a brocade tapestry, like the rushing tide, streaming out from his chest. The intimate connection created between Granddad's hallucination and the joyous celebration of nation founding added splendor to Granddad's image. There are, of course, all sorts of theories – telepathy or supernatural powers – that might explain this inexplicable phenomenon.
Living on the mountain for years endowed Granddad with exceptionally keen senses of hearing and smell. This was not an unusual effect, nor was it a boastful fabrication; it was simply an indisputable fact. Facts are superior to eloquence, and lies cannot cover up facts. That's what Granddad often said at public meetings. Inside his cave he pricked up his ears and caught a faint noise outside. The vines had moved slightly. It wasn't the wind. He knew the form and character of the wind, and could smell the difference in dozens of wind types. As he looked at the trembling vines he detected the smell of a fox, and he knew that retaliation had finally arrived. Ever since taking his knife to all four downy-furred fox cubs and tossing them out of the cave, Granddad had waited for the fox's retaliation. He was not afraid. He was fired up. After he had retreated from the world of men, the beasts had become his companions and his adversaries: wolves, bears, foxes. He knew them all well, and they knew him. After a bout of mortal combat with a bear, they had stayed out of each other's way. They still bared their teeth when they met, but their roars were intended as much to offer greetings as to display fierceness; neither would violate their gentleman's agreement of not attacking each other. The wolf feared my granddad; it was not a worthy adversary. When confronting a more ferocious animal, the wolf is no match for even a homeless mutt. But the fox, in contrast to the wolf and the bear, is a crafty, cunning little fellow, fierce only in the face of a wild hare or a farmhouse chicken.
He picked up his two prized possessions – a cleaver and a pair of scissors – one in each hand. The distinctive stink of fox and the rustling of the vines grew more acute. It was climbing toward him on the vines. Granddad had thought all along that this attack would happen in deep night. A fox's resourcefulness and liveliness is tied to the darkness of night. This broad daylight challenge to recover lost territory and avenge the murder of its cubs surprised him. When troops advance, a general mounts a defense; when floodwaters rise, there will be dirt to stop it. In other words, things will take care of themselves. Having faced far greater dangers many times, Granddad was calm and self-assured. Compared to most days, when all he did was lie low, this morning promised plenty of excitement. On the other side of the ocean, mighty mounted troops were at that moment parading past their heroic leader as he announced in a booming voice the creation of the People's Republic, while below, hundreds of thousands of faces were bathed in hot tears.