concentrating your strength there.”
Not knowing whether to laugh or to cry, Sima Ku said, “Don’t blame the toilet when you can’t do your business. I have no idea what you mean by concentrating my strength somewhere.”
“The way you keep grunting, if that isn’t concentrating your strength, what is it?” the barber replied cleverly. “I’m not deaf, you know.”
“You bastard!” Sima Ku said. “I’m groaning from all the pain.”
One of the guards said to the barber, “You’ve got a job to do. So suck it up and finish shaving him.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Go find a master barber.”
Sima Ku sighed and said, “Shit, where in the world did you find this piece of rubbish? Take off these handcuffs, men, and I’ll shave myself.”
“Not on your life!” one of the guards said. “If you used that as a ploy to attack us and run off, or kill yourself, it would be on our heads.”
“Fuck your old lady!” Sima Ku bellowed. “I want to see whoever’s in charge.” He banged his handcuffs noisily against the window bars.
A security officer came running over. “What do you think you’re doing, Sima Ku,” she demanded.
“Look at my face,” Sima said. “He shaved half and then stopped because he said my beard’s too tough. Does that make sense to you?”
“No,” she said as she slapped the barber’s shoulder. “Why won’t you finish shaving him?”
“His beard’s too tough. And he keeps concentrating his strength in the roots…”
“Fuck your ancestors, with all that talk about concentrating strength!”
The barber held up his damaged razor in defense of his position.
“How about acting like a man, friend?” Sima Ku said to her. “Take off these handcuffs, and I’ll shave myself. It’s the last favor I’ll ever ask.”
The officer, who had participated in Sima’s capture, hesitated momentarily before turning to one of the guards and saying, “Take them off.”
With a sense of foreboding, the guard did as he was told, then jumped back out of harm’s way. Sima Ku rubbed his swollen wrists. When he stuck out his hand, the officer took the razor from the barber and handed it to Sima, who took it and gazed at her dark, grapelike eyes, which were topped by bushy eyebrows. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll attack you, or run off, or kill myself?”
“If you did,” she said with a smile, “then you wouldn’t be Sima Ku.”
With a sigh, Sima said, “I never dreamed it would take a woman to really understand me!”
She smiled scornfully.
Sima stared at the woman’s hard, red lips, and then let his gaze move down to her chest, which arched upward under her khaki uniform. “You’ve got nice breasts, little sister,” he said.
Grinding her teeth in anger, she said, “Is that all you can think about the day before you’re going to die?”
“Little sister,” Sima replied somberly, “I’ve screwed a lot of women in my life, and my only regret is that I’ve never screwed a Communist.”
Furious, she slapped him, so loud and so hard that dust rained down from the rafters. He smiled impishly and said, “I’ve got a young sister-in-law who’s a Communist. She has a firm political stance and nice, firm breasts…”
As her face reddened, the officer spat in Sima’s face and said in a low growl, “Be careful, you mangy mongrel, or I might cut your balls off!”
Sima Ting cried out, his voice filled with sadness and anger, rousing Sima Ku from his anguished thoughts. What he saw was a squad of militiamen dragging his elder brother up to the crowd of onlookers. “I’m innocent – innocent! I’ve rendered great service, and I broke off relations with my brother a long time ago!” No one paid any attention to Sima Ting’s tearful pleas. Sima Ku sighed, as threads of guilt filtered into his heart. When the chips were down, the man was a good and loyal brother, even if you couldn’t trust some of the things he said.
Sima Ting’s legs were so rubbery he couldn’t stand. A village official demanded, “Tell me, Sima Ting, where’s the Felicity Manor treasure vault? If you don’t tell me, you can walk down the same road as him!” “There’s no treasure vault. During land reform, they dug down three feet and didn’t find anything,” Sima Ku’s wretched brother pled his case. Sima Ku grinned and said, “Quit your bitching, Elder Brother!” “It’s all your fault, you bastard!” Sima Ting complained. Sima Ku just shook his head with a wry smile. “Stop this nonsense!” a security bureau officer rebuked the village officials, resting his hand on the butt of his holstered pistol. “Take that man away! Don’t you give a damn about policy?” As they dragged Sima Ting away, the village official said, “We figured this might be a good opportunity to get something out of him.”
The man in charge of the execution raised a little red flag and announced in a loud voice, “Ready -”
The firing squad raised their weapons, waiting for the command. An icy grin spread across Sima Ku’s face as he stared down the black muzzles of the rifles aimed at him. A red glare rose above the dike, and the smell of women blanketed heaven and earth. Sima Ku shouted:
“Women are wonderful things -”
The dull crack of rifle fire split Sima Ku’s head like a ripe melon, sending blood and brain in all directions. His body stiffened for a brief moment, and then toppled forward. At that moment, like the climactic scene in a play, just before the curtain drops, the widow Cui Fengxian from Sandy Mouth Village, wearing a red satin jacket over green satin pants, a spray of golden-yellow silk flowers in her hair, flew down from the top of the dike and lay on the ground beside Sima Ku. I assumed she would begin to wail over the corpse, but she didn’t. Maybe the sight of Sima Ku’s shattered skull drove the courage out of her. She took a pair of scissors from her waistband, which I thought she was going to plunge into her breast to accompany Sima Ku in death. But she didn’t. In the midst of all those staring eyes, she plunged the scissors into Sima Ku’s dead chest. Then she covered her face, shattered the stillness with shrieks of grief, and staggered off as fast as her feet would take her.
The crowd of onlookers stood there like wooden stakes. Sima Ku’s decidedly inelegant last words had bored their way into their hearts, tickling them as they crawled around mischievously. Are women really wonderful things? Maybe they are. Yes, women definitely are wonderful things, but when all is said and done, they aren’t really “things.”
Chapter Six
1
On the day of Shangguan Jintong’s eighteenth birthday, Shangguan Pandi took Lu Shengli away with her. Jintong sat on the dike gazing unhappily at swallows soaring above the river. Sha Zaohua came out of the woods and handed him his birthday present – a little mirror. The dark-skinned girl already had nicely developed breasts; her dark, slightly crossed eyes looked like pebbles on the river bottom and were filled with the glow of passion. “Why don’t you keep it for Sima Liang when he gets back?” Jintong said. She reached into her pocket and took out a larger mirror. “This one’s for him.” “Where’d you get so many mirrors?” Jintong asked, obviously surprised. “I stole them from the co-op,” she said in a soft voice. “I met a thief wizard at the Wopu Market who took me on as her apprentice. After I finish my apprenticeship, if there’s anything you need, just tell me, and I’ll steal it for you. My teacher stole a watch off the wrist of a Soviet adviser and a gold tooth right out of his mouth.” “But that’s against the law.” “She said minor thievery is against the law, but not big-time stealing.” Taking Jintong’s fingers in her hand, she said, “You’ve got soft, slender fingers. You’d make a good thief.” “No, not me. I don’t have the nerve. But Sima Liang does, he’s got guts and he’s always vigilant. He’s your man. You can teach him when he gets back.” As Zaohua put away the big mirror, she said “Liangzi, Liangzi, when will you be coming back?” sounding like a grown- up woman.
