The conversation then turned to Jintong’s experiences on the farm over the preceding year, and he told Mother everything, including sex with Long Qingping, the death of Qiudi and Lu Liren, and how Pandi had changed her name.
Mother sat silently until the moon crept from the eastern sky and cast its light into the yard and through the window. “You didn’t do anything wrong, son,” she said at last. “That young woman Long’s soul found peace, and we will count her as a member of the family. Wait until the times get better, and we will bring her and your seventh sister’s remains home.”
Mother picked up Parrot, who was rocking back and forth from sleep, and carried him to the bed. “There was a time when there were so many Shangguans we were like a herd of sheep. Now there are few of us left.”
Jintong forced himself to ask, “What about Eighth Sister?” With a sigh, she gave him an embarrassed look, as if begging for forgiveness.
Even at the age of twenty, Yunuwas still like a little girl, a frightened, timid little girl. She’d always been like a chrysalis, spending her life in a cocoon, never wanting to cause the family any trouble. During the gloomy, rainy months of summer, she listened sorrowfully to the sound of Mother out in the yard throwing up. Thunder rolled off in the distance, the wind rustled leaves on the trees, the burnt odor of crackling lightning was in the air, but the sounds weren’t loud enough to cover up the retching noise outside, and none of the smells masked the stench of her vomit. The sound of the beans falling into the water went straight to the girl’s heart. How she wished it would stop, but at the same time she wanted it to continue forever. She was disgusted by the smell of Mother’s stomach juices and blood, but at the same time grateful for it. When Mother crushed the beans in the mortar, she felt as if it were her heart being mashed. And when Mother handed her the bowl of beans, with their raw, cold, sticky odor, hot tears rolled out of her sightless eyes and her lovely mouth twitched with each spoonful of the gooey mix. The enormous sense of gratitude in her heart went unspoken.
The previous year, on the morning of the seventh day of the seventh month, as Mother was leaving for the mill, Yunu had blurted out, “What do you look like, Mother?” Reaching out with her fair hands, she’d said, “Let me feel your face – please.”
With a sigh, Mother said, “Foolish little girl, bad as the times are, is that all you want?”
Mother brought her face up to Eighth Sister’s hands and let her stroke it with her soft fingers, which had a damp, cold odor. “Go wash your hands, Yunu. There’s water in the basin.”
After Mother left, Eighth Sister climbed down off the bed. She heard Parrot singing happily in his cradle, mixed with the chirps of birds, the sound of snails dragging slime across the bark of trees, and swallows making a nest in the eaves. Sniffing the air, she followed the smell of clear water over to the basin, where she bent down. Her lovely face was reflected in the water, just as Natasha’s image had once found Jintong’s eyes, but she couldn’t see it. Not many people had seen the face of this Shangguan girl. She had a high nose, fair skin, soft, yellow hair, and a long, thin neck, like that of a swan. When she felt the cold water on the tip of her nose, and then her lips, she buried her face in it. The rush of water up her nose made her choke, bringing her back to reality, and she jerked her head up out of the water. There was a buzzing in her ears, her nose ached and felt swollen. As soon as she smacked her ears with her hands to clear out the water, she heard the chirping of parrots in the tree and the cries of Parrot Han for his eighth aunt. She walked over to the tree, where she reached up and rubbed his drippy nose. Then, without a word, she groped her way out the gate.
Mother reached up and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. “Your eighth sister left because she thought she was a burden,” she said softly. “Your eighth sister was sent to us by her father, the Dragon King. But her time was up, and now she has returned to the Eastern Ocean to continue her life as the Dragon Princess…”
Jintong wanted to console Mother, but could not find the words. He merely coughed to mask the pain in his heart.
Just then there was a knock at the door. Mother trembled briefly, before hiding the mortar and saying to Jintong, “Open the door. See who it is.”
Jintong opened the door. It was the woman from the ferry boat. She was standing timidly at the door holding her lute. “Are you Jintong?” she asked in a tiny, mosquito-like voice.
Shangguan Xiangdi had come home.
8
Five years later, on a winter morning, as Xiangdi lay waiting to die, she suddenly climbed out of bed. Her nose had rotted away, leaving behind only a black hole, and she was blind in both eyes. Nearly all her hair had fallen out, and all that remained were a few rust-colored wisps here and there on her shriveled scalp. After groping her way over to the standing cabinet, she climbed onto a stool and took down her lute, the box of which had been smashed. She then groped her way outside. Sunlight warmed the body of this woman whose rotting flesh smelled like mildew. She looked up at the sun, without seeing it. Mother, who was in the yard weaving rush mats for the production team, stood up. “Xiangdi,” she said anxiously, “my poor daughter, what are you doing out here?”
Xiangdi sat huddled at the base of the wall, her scaly legs sticking out straight. Her belly was exposed, but modesty had long since played no role in her life, and she was no longer bothered by the cold. Mother ran inside for a blanket, which she draped over Xiangdi’s legs. “My precious daughter, all your life, you…” She wiped her eyes dry of the few tears that may have been there, and went back to weaving mats.
The shouts of grade-school children sounded nearby: “Attack attack attack all class enemies! Garry out the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!” Their hoarse slogans traveled up and down the streets and lanes. Childlike drawings and badly written but intense slogans in colored chalk adorned all the walls in the neighborhood.
Xiangdi said in a muffled voice, “Mother, I've slept with ten thousand men and earned a great deal of money. With it I bought gold and jewels, enough to keep food on your table for the rest of your lives.” She rubbed her hand across the box of her lute, which the commune official had smashed, and said, “It was all in here, Mother. Look at this night-luminescent pearl. It was a gift from a Japanese client. If you sew it into a cap and wear it at night, it lights the way like a lantern… I traded ten rings and a small ruby for this cat’s eye… this pair of gold bracelets was a gift from Old Master Xiong, who took my maidenhead.” One by one she removed the precious memorabilia that had been inside the lute. “There’s no need to worry, Mother, not with all this. This emerald alone is enough to buy a thousand catties of flour, and this necklace is at least worth a donkey… Mother, on the day I entered the fire pit of prostitution, I vowed that I would give my sisters a good life, since sleeping with one man is no different than sleeping with a thousand of them. This is what I traded my body for. I carried this lute with me everywhere I went. I had this longevity locket made especially for Jintong. Make sure he wears it… Mother, put these things where thieves cannot find them, and don’t let the Poor Peasants Association take them from you… what you have here is your daughter’s blood and sweat… are you hiding them?”
Mother’s face was now awash in tears. She wrapped her arms around Xiangdi’s syphilitic body and sobbed, “My precious daughter, you’ve shredded my heart… all that we’ve been through, no one had it worse than my Xiangdi…”
Jintong had just returned from having his head split open by a gang of Red Guards while he was out sweeping the streets. Now he stood beneath the parasol tree, all bloody, listening to Fourth Sister’s heartbreaking tale. Red Guards had nailed a row of placards to the gate of their compound, with notices such as: Traitor’s Family, Landlord Restitution Corps Nest, and Whore’s House. But as he listened to his dying sister, he had the urge to change the word “Whore’s” to “Filial Daughter’s” or “Martyr’s.” Up till now he had kept his distance from his sister because of her sickness; how he wished he hadn’t done that. He walked up to her, took her cold hand in his, and said, “Fourth Sister, thank you for the locket… Fm wearing it now.”
The glow of happiness shone in Fourth Sister’s blind eyes. “Really? It doesn’t give you a bad feeling? Don’t tell your wife where you got it… let me touch it… see if it fits.”
During Xiangdi’s final moments on earth, all the fleas on her body left her, sensing, I guess, that there would be no more blood from her.
A smile, an ugly smile, rose on her lips and she said, her voice faltering, “My lute… let me play something… for you…”
She strummed the strings a time or two before her hand fell away and her head slumped to the side.
