the White Horse River, which would take them to the Bohai. The trip would take twenty-one days. This information was part of a geography lesson Birdman Han gave me some eighteen years later. The visit to Northeast Gaomi Township by these pilgrims from distant lands was a virtual reenactment of the sea voyages of Zheng He and Xu Fu centuries earlier, and constituted one of the most glorious chapters in the history of Northeast Gaomi Township. And all because of a Bird Fairy in the Shangguan family. The glory dispersed the clouds of gloom in Mother’s breast; maybe she was hoping that some other animal fairy would make an appearance in the house, a Fish Fairy, for instance. But then again, maybe she wasn’t.
After the fishermen were back on their boats, an eminent guest showed up. She arrived in a sleek, black Chevrolet sedan, with hulking bodyguards, armed with Mausers, standing on each running board. She was escorted by clouds of dust from the village’s dirt road. The poor bodyguards looked like donkeys that had been rolling in the dirt. The sedan pulled up to our doorway and stopped. One of the bodyguards opened the back door. First to appear was a pearl and jade head ornament, followed by a neck, and lastly a fat torso. Both in terms of figure and expression, the woman looked exactly like an oversized goose.
In strictest terms, a goose is also a bird. But however elevated her status, when she came calling on the Bird Fairy, courtesy and reverence were expected. Nothing escaped the Bird Fairy, who knew everything in advance, so no hypocrisy or arrogance could be tolerated. The woman knelt at the window, closed her eyes, and prayed softly. Her face was the color of rose petals, so she hadn’t come for relief of an illness; jewelry sparkled from head to toe, so she hadn’t come to seek riches. What could a woman like that be seeking from the Bird Fairy? A slip of white paper floated out through the hole in the window; when the woman opened it up and read it, her face turned as red as a rooster’s cockscomb. She tossed several silver dollars to the ground, stood up, and walked off. What was written on the slip of paper? Only the Bird Fairy and the woman knew.
Visitors continued to throng to our place for days, and then they stopped. By the time the cold winter set in, we had eaten all the dried fish in the burlap sack, and once again Mother’s milk carried the taste of grass and the bark of trees. On the seventh day of the twelfth month, we heard that the largest local Christian sect would be opening a soup kitchen in Northgate Cathedral. So Mother and we children, bowls and chopsticks in hand, walked all night with groups of starving villagers into the county seat. We left Third Sister and Shangguan Lu to watch the house; since one of them was more fairy than human and the other less human than demon, they were better prepared to put up with hunger. Before leaving, Mother tossed a handful of grass to Shangguan Lu. “Mother,” she said, “if you are able to die, do so quickly. Why suffer with us this way?”
It was the first time any of us had taken the road to the county seat. By “road” I mean only that we followed a little gray path formed by the footprints of man and beast. I couldn’t tell you how that rich woman’s car had made it to our village. We trudged along in cold starlight, me standing up on Mother’s back, the little Sima heir on the back of Fourth Sister, Eighth Sister on the back of Fifth Sister, my sixth and seventh sisters walking by themselves. As midnight came and went, we heard the intermittent cries of children in the wilderness all around us. Seventh Sister, Eighth Sister, and the little Sima heir also started to cry. Mother shouted her disapproval, but even she was crying, and so were Fourth Sister and Fifth Sister, both of whom suddenly tottered and fell to the ground. But as soon as Mother picked up one and went for the other, the first one fell again. And so it went, back and forth. Finally, Mother sat on the cold ground, along with all the others, huddling together to keep warm. She shifted me around to the front and put her cold hand under my nose to see if I was still breathing. She must have thought that either the cold or hunger had taken me from her. I breathed weakly to show her I was still alive. So she raised the curtain over her breasts and stuffed a cold nipple into my mouth. It felt like an ice cube slowly melting in my mouth and turning it numb. Mother’s breast had nothing to give; no matter how hard I sucked, all I managed to draw from it were a few wispy strands of blood. It was cold, so very cold! And in the midst of that cold, mirages floated in front of the eyes of the starving people around us: a blazing stove, a pot filled with steaming chicken and duck, plate after plate of meat-stuffed buns, all that and green grass and lovely flowers. In front of my eyes were two gourd-sized breasts, overflowing with rich liquid, lively as a pair of doves and sleek as porcelain bowls. They smelled wonderful and looked beautiful; slightly blue-tinged liquid, sweet as honey, gushed from them, filling my belly and drenching me from head to toe. I wrapped my arms around the breasts and swam in their fountains of liquid… overhead, millions and billions of stars swirled through the sky, round and round to form gigantic breasts: breasts on Sirius, the Dog Star; breasts on the Big Dipper; breasts on Orion the Hunter; breasts on Vega, the Girl Weaver; breasts on Altair, the Cowherd; breasts on Chang’e, the Beauty in the Moon, Mother’s breasts… I spat out Mother’s nipple and gazed up the road a ways. A man holding a tattered goatskin torch high over his head came bounding toward us. It was Third Master Fan. He was bare to the waist, and amid the acrid stench of burning animal skin and the glare of its light, he was yelling, “Fellow villagers – do not sit down, not under any circumstances. If you sit down, you will freeze to death – come, fellow villagers – keep moving forward – to keep moving is to live, to sit down is to die -”
Third Master Fan’s heartfelt exhortation brought many people up from the illusory huddled warmth, a sure path to death, and onto their feet, moving through the cold that was their only chance of survival. Mother stood up, shifted me around to the back, picked up the wretched little Sima heir and held him in her arms, then grabbed Eighth Sister by the arm and began kicking Fourth Sister and Fifth Sister and Sixth Sister and Seventh Sister to get them to their feet. We fell in behind Third Master Fan, who had used his own goatskin jacket as a torch to light our way. What carried us forward wasn’t our feet, but our willpower, our desire to reach the county seat, to reach Northgate Cathedral, to accept God’s mercy, to accept a bowl of twelfth-month gruel.
Dozens of corpses littered the roadside on this solemn and tragic procession. Some lay with their shirts open and a beatific expression on their faces, as if to warm their chests by the passing flame.
Third Master Fan died in the first glow of sunrise.
We all ate God’s twelfth-month gruel; mine came through my mother’s breasts. I’ll never forget the scene surrounding that meal. Magpies roosted on the cross beneath the high cathedral ceiling. A train panted its way along tracks outside. Steam rose from two huge cauldrons filled with beef stew. The black-cassocked priest stood beside the cauldrons and prayed as hundreds of starving peasants formed a queue behind him. Parishioners spooned gruel into bowls, one ladle-ful apiece, regardless of the size of the bowl. Loud slurping noises attended the consumption of the gruel, which was diluted by countless tears. Hundreds of pink tongues licked bowls clean, and then the queue formed again. Several burlap sacks of cracked rice and several buckets of water were dumped into the cauldrons; this time, as I could tell from the quality of the milk, the gruel consisted of cracked rice, moldy sorghum, half-rotten soybeans, and barley with chaff.
6
On our way home after eating the twelfth-month gruel, our sense of hunger was greater than ever. No one had the strength to bury the corpses lining the path through the wilderness, nor could anyone muster the energy to even go up and take a look at them. The body of Third Master Fan was the sole exception. During the height of our crisis, a man people normally steered clear of had taken off his goatskin jacket, turned it into a torch, and, with its light and his shouts, brought us to our senses. That sort of kindness, the gift of life, can never be forgotten. So, with Mother taking the lead, the people dragged the old man’s sticklike figure over to the side of the road and covered it with dirt.
When we got back home, the first thing we saw was the Bird Fairy pacing back and forth in the yard, holding something bundled in a purple marten overcoat. Mother had to hold on to the doorframe to keep from falling. Third Sister walked up and handed her the bundle. “What’s this?” Mother asked. In an almost completely human voice, Third Sister said, “A child.” “Whose?” Mother asked, although I think she already knew. “Whose do you think?” Third Sister said.
Obviously, Laidi’s purple marten coat would only be used to bundle Laidi’s child.
It was a baby girl, dark as a lump of coal, with black eyes like those of a fighting cock, thin lips, and big pale ears that seemed out of place on her face. These characteristics were all the proof we needed of her origins: This was the Shangguan family’s first niece, presented to us by Eldest Sister and Sha Yueliang.
Mother’s disgust was written all over her face, to which the baby responded with a kittenish smile. Nearly passing out from anger, Mother forgot all about the Bird Fairy’s mystical powers and kicked Third Sister in the leg.
