into the river?” The mute ran up and grabbed him by the collar, pulling so hard that several black plastic buttons snapped off. In his excitement, the mute spat out a word – Strip! – everyone heard it.
Zunlong looked at the hole and at the eddies in the river. “You there, soldiers,” he said, “it’s a gopher hole, which means it widens out below. Your commander wants you to strip so you can go down and plug the holes. Go on, men, strip. If you don’t do it now, it’ll be too late.”
Zunlong took off his patched jacket and threw it at the mute’s feet. Taking their cue from him, the soldiers began to strip. One youngster merely took off his jacket, leaving his pants on. The mute, getting angrier by the minute, repeated his command: “Strip! Strip! Strip!” When cornered, dogs jump over walls, cats climb trees, rabbits bite, and mutes speak. Over and over he bellowed. “Commander,” the young soldier stammered, “I’m not wearing undershorts!” The mute picked up his sword and laid the back of the blade across the soldier’s neck, thumping it twice. The poor soldier paled and blubbered, “I’ll strip, Grandpa Mute, how’s that?” He bent down, untied his leggings, and took off his pants, revealing his lily-white backside and a nearly hairless prick, which he quickly covered with his hands. The mute turned to have the guard strip also, but the man ran down the dike, jumped on his bicycle, rocked back and forth a time or two, and sped away, shouting as he went, “The dike’s about to go – the dike’s about to go!”
While Zunlong knocked down a bean trellis at the foot of the dike and made a large ball out of the vines and pieces of lath, the mute put his clothes in a pile and tied them up with his leggings. Several soldiers helped him roll the bundle up to the top of the dike, where the mute picked it up and was about to jump into the river, when Zunlong pointed to a whirlpool. So he went over to his toolbox, took out a flat green bottle, and removed the cork. The smell of alcohol rose into the air. The mute took the bottle, tipped his head back, and poured the contents down his throat. With a thumbs-up, he waved at Zunlong and shouted, “Strip!” which everyone knew meant “good.” Bundle in hand, he dove into the river, whose waters had already breached the dike. By then the gopher hole was the size of a horse’s neck, releasing gushing water that snaked its way down the lane and turned into a fullblown stream of murky water that quickly reached our door. Our houses looked like miniature sand castles alongside the raging river. The mute disappeared in the river, the spot marked by bubbles and clumps of grass. Gulls skimmed the surface, their beady black eyes fixed with nervous anticipation on the spot where the mute had gone into the water. I could make out their bright red beaks and the black talons tucked under their bellies. With growing anxiety, we kept our eyes glued to the water as a glistening dark watermelon rolled once and was swallowed up. It resurfaced a few feet downriver. Then a scrawny black frog struggled to swim toward us from the middle of the muddy river, fighting the current. When it reached the relatively calm water near the bank, I could see the little wakes made by its scissoring legs. The soldiers, nervous looks frozen on their taut faces, stretched their necks to see what was happening. They looked like a line of condemned men awaiting the executioner’s sword. The one who’d been forced to strip naked kept the family jewels hidden behind his hands as he too craned his neck to look. Zunlong, on the other hand, was staring at the hole in the dike. Seeing that no one was paying attention, Sima Liang picked up the mute’s sword, a weapon that killed men as easily as slicing a melon, and furtively ran his thumb along the blade to test its sharpness.
“Okay!” Zunlong shouted. “The hole’s been plugged!”
The savage gush of water from the hole was now a mere trickle. Like a huge black fish, the mute’s head crashed through the surface, sending the gulls circling above the spot soaring skyward in fright. As he wiped the water from his face with one of his large hands, he spat out a muddy geyser. Zunlong ordered the soldiers to toss the ball of vines out into the river. The mute grabbed it with both hands, pressing it down into the water so he could climb on top, legs and all. He too dipped beneath the surface, but only for a moment; he sucked in a mouthful of air the moment his head reappeared. Zunlong reached out with a long branch to pull him in, but the mute waved him off and dipped back beneath the surface.
In the village the crash of a gong was followed by a bugled charge. Scores of armed soldiers rushed the riverbank from all the neighboring lanes. Lu Liren and his guards emerged from the mouth of our lane. The minute he reached the dike, he shouted, “Where’s the danger?”
The mute’s head popped up, and then quickly disappeared, a sign that he was exhausted. So Zunlong reached out again with his branch and pulled the mute to the river’s edge, where soldiers dragged him up onto dry land. Rubber-legged, he sat on the bank.
“Commander,” Zunlong said to Lu Liren, “if not for this man, the villagers would probably be feeding the turtles by now.”
Lu walked up to the mute and gave him a thumbs-up. His skin a mass of goose bumps and his face covered with mud, the mute just smiled.
Lu Liren’s men turned to shoring up the dike. Meanwhile, work on the rafts continued, since the prisoners had to be ferried across the river by noon, where they were to be met by escorts from headquarters. The soldiers who had shed their uniforms were relieved. The more praise that was heaped upon them, the more energetic they became, and they asked to stay to complete their mission, with or without uniforms. So Lu Liren had someone run back to camp to fetch a pair of pants for the little bare-assed soldier. He smiled at the youngster and said, “Why be embarrassed just because you’ve got a hairless little pecker?” While he was giving orders, Lu turned to me and asked, “How’s your mother? Shengli must be quite a handful.” Sima Liang nudged me, but I didn’t know what he wanted. So he spoke up: “Granny wants to come to see my father off and would like you to wait for her.”
Meanwhile, Zunlong had thrown himself into his work, and within half an hour had built a raft several meters long. Since they had no oars, he recommended that they use wooden spades. Lu Liren gave the order. Then he replied to Sima Liang, “Go tell your granny that I’ve granted her request.” He looked at his watch. “You two can leave now.” But we didn’t, because when we looked toward the house, we saw Mother walk out the door with a bamboo basket covered by a piece of white cloth over one arm and carrying a red earthenware teapot in her other hand. Zaohua walked out after her, a bunch of green scallions in her arms. Behind her came Sima Ku’s twin daughters, Sima Feng and Sima Huang; they were followed by the twin sons of the mute and Third Sister, Big Mute and Little Mute. Then came Lu Shengli, who had just learned to walk. Bringing up the rear was Shangguan Laidi, her face heavily powdered. The procession moved slowly. The twin girls kept looking at the bean vines and the morning glories growing among them, hoping to see dragonflies, butterflies, or cicada shells. The twin boys kept looking at trees lining the lane – scholar trees, willow trees, and mulberry trees, with their light yellow bark; they were looking for delectable snails. Lu Shengli kept her eyes peeled for puddles, and whenever she spotted one, she stomped down in the water and filled the lane with gales of innocent laughter. Laidi was walking like a proper young lady, but I was so far away I could see only her powdered face, not her features.
Lu Liren took a pair of binoculars from the neck of one of his guards and looked across the river. A soldier beside him asked with a sense of urgency, “Are they here?”
“No,” he said without looking away. “Not a trace of them. All I see is a crow pecking at a pile of horse dung.”
“Could something have happened to them?” the guard asked anxiously.
“I don’t think so. They’re all marksmen, and no one would dare try to stop them.”
Suddenly, a group of dark-skinned men stood on the opposite dike; the sun’s shifting reflection on the surface created the illusion that they were standing on the water, not the dike. “There they are,” Lu Liren said. “Have the signalmen let them know we’re here.”
A young soldier stepped up, raised a short, stubby, strange-looking pistol, and fired it into the air. A yellow ball arced into the sky, froze there for a moment, and then fell in a sweeping curve, leaving a trail of white smoke and a sizzling sound before falling into the river. As it fell, some gulls were tempted to go after it, but a closer look sent them fleeing with shrill cries.
“Give another signal,” Lu Liren said, when there was no response.
This time the soldier took out a red banner, tied it to the end of the branch Zunlong had discarded, and waved it in the air; the men on the other bank roared their approval.
“Good,” Lu Liren said as he draped the binoculars around his neck. He turned to the young officer who had spoken with him a moment before. “Staff Officer Qian, run back and tell Chief of Staff Du to bring the prisoners, on the double.” Staff Officer Du turned and ran down the dike.
Lu Liren jumped onto the raft and stomped on it to see how sturdy it was. “It won’t break up out on the river, will it?” he asked Zunlong.
“Don’t you worry, sir. Back in the autumn of 1921, the villagers ferried Senator Zhao across the river. I made the raft they used.”
