On the ridge he saw a cornfield where the stalks were rustling in wind that sounded very near. He squatted down and hid behind a tree. The field was no larger than a few acres, and the thin, stumpy ears of corn did not look healthy, apparently deprived of both fertilizer and water. Drifting back in time, he detected the smell of burning mugwort. Mosquitoes were buzzing around the edges of the smoke; a cricket in a pear tree chirped shrilly; in the darkness a horse was eating bran mixed with hay; an owl in a graveyard cypress hooted sorrowfully; and the deep, thick night was drenched with dew. Someone coughed in the cornfield. It was a woman. Granddad was startled out of his reveries, excited and afraid.
People were what he feared the most, and also what he missed the most.
In the grip of excitement and fear, he held his breath and focused his eyes, wanting to have a look at the woman in the cornfield. She'd only coughed once, lightly, but he could tell it was a woman. His hearing sharpened and he smelled the scent of a Japanese woman.
She finally appeared in the cornfield. Her face was ashen, her large, single-fold eyes gloomy. She had a thin nose and a small, delicate mouth. Granddad felt no malice toward her. She removed her tattered scarf to reveal uncombed brown hair. She was obviously undernourished, just like starving women in China. Granddad's fear was quietly replaced by a sort of pity wholly inappropriate to the situation. She set a basket of corn on the ground and wiped her sweaty brow with her scarf, streaking her ashen face.
She wore a loose, bulky, badly faded yellow jacket, which gave rise to wicked thoughts in Granddad. Thin autumn breezes blew. From the forest came the monotonous tapping of a woodpecker. Behind him the ocean was panting. Granddad heard her mutter something in a low, hoarse voice. Like most Japanese women, her neck and chest were white. Brazenly, she unbuttoned her clothing to allow in the breeze, observed fixedly by Granddad. He saw from her swollen breasts that she was a nursing mother. When Douguan squirmed as he hung at Grandma's breast, she had spanked his round bottom. Now the spare, stalwart Douguan was sitting high on the back of his steed, holding the reins loosely as he galloped past Tiananmen Gate. The clatter of the horse's iron shoes rang out on the stone-paved avenue, as he and his companions shouted slogans that rocked heaven and earth. He wanted to turn to look at the men standing atop the wall, but strict discipline kept him from doing so. All he could do was catch a glimpse of the great men standing beneath the red lanterns out of the corner of his eye.
She had no reason to cover herself on that bleak, deserted mountain ridge as she urinated. The entire process was aimed straight at Granddad, who felt his blood surge; his wounds throbbed painfully. He stood up in a crouch, mindless of the noise his arms made as they bumped into branches of the tree.
The woman's lackluster gaze suddenly focused, and Granddad watched her mouth open wide. A cry of apparent terror tore from her mouth. Off balance, yet with lightning speed, Granddad rushed toward the woman. How frightening he must have looked.
Not long afterward, he would see his reflection in the clear water of the stream, and realize why the Japanese woman had crumpled like a rag doll there in the cornfield.
Granddad laid her down, her body yielding to his positioning. Ripping open her blouse, he saw her heart pounding wildly beneath her breasts. The woman was skin and bones, her body sticky with sweat and filth.
Granddad tore at her, spewing words of foul revenge, one string after another, echoing in his ears: Japan! Little Japanese! Jap bastards! You raped and killed my women, bayoneted my daughter, enslaved my people, slaughtered my troops, trampled on my countrymen, and burned down our houses. The blood debt between us is as great as the ocean. Ha ha. Today your woman has fallen into my hands!
Hatred turned his eyes blood red. His teeth itched. An evil flame hardened him like steel. He slapped her. He tore at her hair and squeezed her breasts. He dug his fingers into her flesh. She trembled and moaned, as if talking in her sleep.
Granddad's voice continued to roar in his ears, spewing filth: Why don't you fight? I'm going to rape you, kill you! I'm going to fuck you to death! An eye for an eye! Are you dead? Even if you are, I won't let go of you!
He ripped off her lower garments, the tattered cloth tearing easily, like cardboard. Granddad told me that when her lower garments fell, the hot blood that had been surging through his body abruptly turned cold, and his body, hard as rifle steel, suddenly went limp, like a rooster that's lost a cockfight, hanging its head in defeat, its feathers torn and ragged.
Granddad said he saw a black patch sewn in the crotch of her red underwear, and lost heart.
Granddad, how could a hardened son of China like you be afraid of a patch? Did it violate some taboo of your Iron Society?
My grandson, it wasn't a patch that your granddad feared!
Granddad said that seeing the black patch on the crotch of the woman's red underpants was like being hit in the head with a club.
The Japanese woman became an icy corpse. The field of fiery red sorghum from twenty-five years earlier once again surged before him, like a galloping horse. It muddled his vision and flooded his mind. Desolate music resounded deep in his soul, each note a hammer pounding against his heart, and in that sea of blood, in that fiery oven, on that holy sacrificial altar, was Grandma, laid out face-up like a lovely piece of jade, the body of a sweet young girl. Her clothing too had been ripped open to expose the same sort of red underwear, with a similar black patch over the crotch. That time Granddad had not turned limp and weak, and that black patch had become a symbol that was burned into his memory, never to disappear. His tears flowed down to the corners of his mouth, where he tasted a mixture of sweetness and bitterness.
Granddad roughly straightened the woman's clothes with his weary hands. The bruises on her body brought him deep remorse. Staggering to his feet, he started to walk away. His legs were sore and numb. The hot, swollen wound on his neck throbbed, as if engorged with pus. The trees and the mountain peak before him were transformed into a dazzling crimson. Way up high, in the upper reaches of heaven, there in the clouds, Grandma, her chest riddled with bullets, fell slowly into Granddad's outstretched arms. When all her blood had flowed out, her body became as light as a beautiful red butterfly. Cupping her in his hands, he walked ahead, down a path opened amid the supple stalks of sorghum. Light from the path streaked skyward; light from the heavens streamed down, fusing heaven and earth. He was standing on the tall embankment of the Black Water River, where yellow weeds grew and white flowers bloomed. The water, the brilliant color of blood, congealed into oil, so bright it was a mirror that reflected the blue sky and white clouds, the dove and the goshawk. Granddad fell headlong into the cornfield on the Japanese mountain ridge; it was like falling into a sorghum field in his homeland.