fried horsemeat with chives.”
Happiness was written on the prisoners’ faces, and some of the men worked up the courage to talk quietly among themselves.
“There are lots of dead horses,” Commissar Jiang said, “all of them fine animals. What a shame you had to stumble into our minefield. When you’re eating horsemeat in a little while, who knows, you may be eating your own mounts, even though, as people say, ‘mules and horses may be as fine as gentlemen, but they’re still only mules and horses.’ So go ahead, eat as much as you can, since man is at the top of the food chain.”
He was still talking about horses when a pair of elderly soldiers carried in a large cauldron, grunting from the effort. Two younger soldiers staggered along behind, each carrying a stack of bowls from their navel all the way up under their chins. “Here’s the soup! Soup!” the old soldiers shouted, as if someone were blocking their way. The young soldiers strained to see over their stacked bowls to find a place to put them down. The two old soldiers squatted down and put the cauldron on the floor, nearly sitting down in the process. The young soldiers kept their upper bodies straight as they crouched down, placed the stacks of bowls on the floor, and pulled their hands out from under them. The stacks rocked back and forth. Freed of their burden, the men stood up and mopped their sweaty brows.
Commissar Jiang picked up a large wooden ladle and stirred the soup. “Did you add brown sugar?” he asked the old soldiers. “Reporting, sir, we couldn’t find brown sugar, so we went out and got a jar of granulated sugar. We took it from the Cao house. Old lady Cao didn’t want to part with it, and held on to it for dear life…”
“That’s enough. Dish it out to the men here!” Commisar Jiang said as he tossed down the ladle. Then, suddenly seeming to recall our presence, he turned and asked invitingly, “Would you each like a bowl?”
With a smirk, Laidi said, “The commissar did not invite us here to drink mung bean soup, did he?”
“Why shouldn’t we?” Mother said. “Old Zhang, each of the girls and I will have a bowl.”
“Mother,” Laidi said, “what if it’s poisoned?”
Commissar Jiang had a big laugh over that. “Mrs. Sha, you have quite an imagination.” He picked up the ladle, scooped out some of the soup, held it high, and let it drip back into the vat to show off the appearance and the aroma. Then he threw down the ladle again. “We put a packet of arsenic and two packets of rat poison into this soup. One drink and your stomach will burst within five paces, you’ll crumple to the ground in six, and blood will spurt from all the holes in your body. Now, anyone dare to drink it?”
Mother stepped up, picked up a bowl and dusted it with her sleeve, then reached for the ladle, with which she filled the bowl with soup and handed it to First Sister, who refused it. So Mother said, “Then this bowl is mine.” After blowing on the liquid, she took a couple of sips. After a couple more tentative sips, she filled three more bowls, which she handed to Sixth Sister, Eighth Sister, and the young Sima. “Our turn,” shouted some of the prisoners. “Give us some. We’ll drink three bowls of the stuff, poisoned or not.”
With the two old soldiers manning the ladles, the two younger ones passed out the bowls. The armed guards moved off to the sides and faced us at an angle; we could see their eyes, which were fixed on the prisoners, now on their feet and lining up, holding up their pants with one hand and ready to take bowls of mung bean soup with the other. Once they had the bowls in hand, they looked down cautiously, fearful that the hot liquid might burn their fingers. One by one, they returned slowly to the rear of the hall, where they hunkered down, freeing up both hands to hold the soup, which they blew on to cool before starting to eat. A puff of air, followed by noisy sips, the practiced way to eat without burning the inside of your mouth. Young Sima, lacking that experience, slurped up a mouthful, which he could neither spit out nor swallow, and wound up with a burned mouth. While he was taking his bowl of soup, one of the prisoners said softly, “Second Uncle…” The old soldier with the ladle looked up and stared into the young face before him. “Don’t you recognize me, Second Uncle? It’s me, Little Chang…” The old soldier reached out and whacked the back of Little Chang’s hand with the ladle. “Who are you calling Second Uncle?” he scolded. “You’ve got the wrong man. I’ve got no nephew who’s willing to be a turncoat and wear a green uniform!” With a cry of
“Old Zhang, you have your orders!” Commissar Jiang said angrily. “Who gave you the authority to strike a prisoner? Report to the sergeant-at-arms. Three days in the stockade!”
“But,” Old Zhang protested, “he called me Second Uncle…”
“I’m betting you are his second uncle,” Commissar Jiang said. “Why try to hide it? If he does what he’s told, he can become a member of our demolition battalion. How’s that burn, youngster? We’ll have a medic put some salve on it in a little while. Meanwhile, he spilled his soup, so give him another bowl, and add a few extra beans.”
The unfortunate young nephew hobbled back to the rear of the hall with his thicker-than-average soup, as the prisoners behind him in line stepped up to get their bowls.
Now all the prisoners were drinking their soup, filling the church with loud slurps. For the moment, the old and young soldiers had nothing to do; one of the young ones was standing there licking his lips, the other had his eyes fixed on me. One of the older ones was scraping the bottom of the vat with his ladle, the other had taken out a tobacco pouch and pipe and was preparing to take a smoke break. Mother put her bowl up to my lips, but I pushed it away, disgusted by its coarseness. My mouth was adapted to one thing and one thing only: her nipples.
First Sister snorted disdainfully. Commissar Jiang was looking at her, and she made sure she rewarded him with an expression of contempt. “I guess I should have a bowl of mung bean soup too,” she said.
“Of course you should,” Commissar Jiang said. “Just look at your face. It reminds me of a dry eggplant. Old Zhang, a bowl of soup for Mrs. Sha, and hurry. Make it thick.”
“I want it thin,” First Sister said.
“Then make it thin,” Commissar Jiang said.
Holding the bowl up to her mouth, First Sister took a sip. “You did add sugar,” she said. “Commissar Jiang, why don’t you have a bowl. Your throat must be dry after all that talk.”
Commissar Jiang reached up and pinched his throat. “Indeed it is. Fill up a bowl for me, Old Zhang. Thin.”
With the bowl in his hands, Commissar Jiang discussed the qualities of mung beans with First Sister. He told her that in his hometown there was a sandy variety that softened as soon as the water boiled, whereas the local beans didn’t even begin to soften for a couple of hours. Once they’d exhausted the subject of mung beans, they moved on to soybeans. You’d have thought they were bean experts; after they’d discussed nearly all varieties of beans, and Commissar Jiang had started in on peanuts, First Sister threw her bowl to the floor and spat out savagely, “What sort of trap are you setting, Jiang?”
“Mrs. Sha,” he said, “don’t overreact. Let’s go, what do you say? We’ve kept Commander Sha waiting long enough.”
“Where is he?” First Sister asked derisively.
“A place you remember only too well, of course,” Jiang replied.
There were more sentries at our gate than at the church.
One group was stationed at the door to the east wing, under the command of the mute, Speechless Sun. He was sitting on a log beside the wall, playing with his sword. The Bird Fairy was perched in the crotch of the peach tree, holding a cucumber and nibbling it with her front teeth.
“Go on in,” Commissar Jiang said to First Sister. “Try to talk some sense into him. We’re hoping he’ll abandon the dark and walk into the light.”
The moment First Sister entered the east wing, she let out a shriek.
We ran in after her. Sha Yueliang was hanging from the rafters. He was wearing a green wool uniform and a pair of shiny, knee-length leather boots. I remembered him as being of average height; but hanging there, he struck me as being exceptionally tall.
9
I climbed down off the
