a slip of paper across his knee and scribbled something on it. “What’s your name?” he asked. “And which county and district are you from?”
Wang Chao told him.
“Your county head, Lu Liren, and I are old comrades-in-arms. So here’s what we’ll do. After the battle’s over, you give this to him, and he’ll see that you get a new cart.”
Wang Chao pointed to us and said, “That’s Lu Liren’s mother-in-law, sir. That’s his family.”
“Madam,” the one-armed man said, “you’ll be my witness. Just tell him that the situation was critical, and that Guo Mofu, political instructor of the Eighth Militia Company of the Bohai District, borrowed a pushcart belonging to the villager Wang Chao, and ask him to take care of it for me.”
Then he turned back to Wang Chao. “That’ll do it,” he said as he pressed the slip of paper into Wang’s hand. Then he turned and said angrily to Wang Jin, “What are you standing around for? If we don’t get these provisions there in time, you and your son will taste the whip, and me, Guo Mofu, I’ll taste the bullet!” He turned to Wang Chao. “Unload your cart, and be quick about it!”
“What am I supposed to do, sir?” Wang Chao said.
“If you’re worried about your cart, you can come along with us. Our porter company has enough food for one more man. Once the battle’s over, you can take your cart with you.”
“But, sir, I just escaped from there,” Wang Chao said tearfully.
“Are you going to make me take out my pistol and put a bullet in you?” the enraged political instructor demanded. “We’re not afraid to spill blood and make sacrifices for the revolution. I can’t believe you’re making such a fuss over a little cart.”
“Aunt,” Wang Chao said pathetically. “You’re my witness.”
Mother nodded.
Wang Jin and his son gleefully walked off with Wang Chao’s rubber-tired cart, as the one-armed man nodded politely to Mother, before turning and running off to catch up with his men.
Wang Chao sat down on his quilt, a pained look on his face, mumbling to himself. “Talk about bad luck! Why does everything happen to me? Who did I offend?” Tears slid down his fat cheeks.
We finally made it to the foot of the mountain, where the gravel road spoked off into ten or more narrow paths that wound their way up the mountainside. That evening, the refugees gathered in groups where all sorts of dialects were spoken, to pass on conflicting reports. We suffered through the night huddled amid the underbrush at the foot of the mountain. Dull explosions, like peals of thunder, sounded both to the north and the south, as artillery shells tore through the darkness in sweeping arcs. The air turned cold and damp as the night deepened, and bitter winds snaked out of mountain crevasses, violently shaking the leaves and branches of our shelter and setting fallen leaves rustling. Foxes in their dens cried mournfully. Sick children moaned like unhappy cats; the coughs from old folks sounded like gongs being struck. It was a terrible night, and when dawn broke, we would find dozens of frozen corpses lining the mountain hollows – children, old folks, even young men and women. Our family owed its survival to the unusual low trees, with their golden leaves, that protected us. They were the only trees whose leaves had not fallen. We lay together on the thick, dry grass beneath the trees, huddled under the one quilt we’d brought. My goat lay up against my back and shielded me from the wind. The hours after midnight were the worst. The rumble of artillery fire to the south only increased the stillness of the night; people’s moans cut deeply into our hearts and made us tremble. A melody much like the familiar “cat’s meow,” our local drama, sounded in our ears. It was a woman’s sobs. Amid the overwhelming silence, the sounds sliced into the rocks, cold and damp, and dark clouds stuck to the icy quilt that covered us. Then the rain came, freezing rain; raindrops fell on our quilt, they fell on the rustling yellow leaves, they fell on the mountainside, they fell on the refugees’ heads, and they fell on the thick coats of baying wolves. Most of the raindrops turned to ice before they hit the ground, where they formed a hard crust.
I was reminded of that night years before when Elder Fan Three had led us away from sure death, his torch held high, flames the red of a roan colt dancing in the air. That night I’d been immersed in a warm sea of milk, holding on to a full breast with both hands and feeling myself fly up to Paradise. But now the frightful apparition began, like a golden ray of light splitting the darkness, or like the beam of light from Babbitt’s film projector; thousands of icy droplets danced in the light, like beetles, as a woman with long, flowing hair appeared, a cape like sunset draped over her shoulders, its embedded pearls glittering and casting shimmers of light, some long and some short. Her face kept changing: first Laidi; then the Bird Fairy; then the single-breasted woman, Old Jin; and then suddenly the American woman…
“Jintong!” Mother was calling me. She brought me out of my hallucinations. In the darkness, she and First Sister were massaging my arms and legs to bring me back before I fell into the abyss of death.
The sound of someone crying emerged from the underbrush in the hazy sunlight of early morning. People faced with the stiffened corpses of loved ones gave vent to their grief with loud wails. But thanks to the yellow leaves on the trees above us and the tattered quilt that covered us, all seven of our hearts were still beating. Mother handed each of us one of the pills Pandi had given her. I said I didn’t want mine, so Mother shoved it into the mouth of my goat. After chewing up the pill, the goat turned its attention to the leaves of the underbrush; they, like the branches from which they hung, were covered by a filmy layer of ice, which also hung from boulders on the mountainside. There was no wind, but a freezing rain continued to fall, making a loud tattoo on the branches. The surface of the mountain glistened like a mirror.
One of the refugees, leading a donkey with a woman’s corpse draped over its back, was trying to make his way up one of the mountain paths. But the going was so treacherous that the donkey slipped on the ice, and every time it got to its feet, it hit the ground again. The man wanted to help, but he invariably fell down too. It did not take long for their plight to result in the corpse slipping off the animal’s back and into a ditch. Just then a golden-pelted wildcat emerged from one of the mountain hollows carrying a child in its mouth as it bounded awkwardly from one boulder to another, struggling to keep its balance as it moved. A woman whose hair was in disarray was chasing the wildcat, shrieking and wailing as she ran, but she too kept losing her footing on the icy rocks. Unfazed, every time she fell, she scrambled to her feet and continued the chase, for which she paid a heavy price: chin split open, teeth knocked out, a gash on the back of her head, broken fingernails, a sprained ankle, a dislocated shoulder, and traumatized internal organs. And still she kept going, until the wildcat slowed down enough for her to grab it by the tail.
Danger lurked for everyone: if they tried to move, they fell; if they didn’t try, they froze to death. And since freezing to death was not an option, they kept falling, and soon lost sight of their evacuation goal. The mountaintop monastery had by then turned white and gave off a frigid glare. So did the trees halfway up the mountain. At that height, the freezing rain turned to snow. Lacking the nerve to climb to the top, the people merely kept moving at the foot of the mountain. We looked up and spotted the body of Wang Chao the barber hanging from a rubber tree; he had looped his belt over a low-hanging branch, the weight of his body nearly breaking it off from the trunk. The toes of his shoes were touching the ground, his pants were down around his knees, and his padded jacket was tied around his waist to salvage his image, even in death. One look at that purple face and protruding tongue, and I turned away in disgust. But too late to keep the image of his dead face from appearing often in my dreams from that day on. No one gave him a second thought, although several simple-looking people were fighting over his quilt and the dog pelt that covered it. In the midst of their grappling, a tall young man suddenly screamed in pain; a ratty little man beside him had bitten off a chunk of one of his protruding ears. The fellow spat the earlobe into his hand, looked it over, and handed it back to it owner, before picking up the heavy quilt and dog pelt. To keep from falling, he took little hops over to the side of an old man, who promptly whacked him on the head with a forked stick used to keep a cart from rolling away. The little fellow hit the ground like a sack of rice. The old man picked up the quilt, backed up against a tree, holding on to his prize with one hand and brandishing his forked stick with the other. Some foolhardy young devils entertained thoughts of taking the quilt away from the old man, but a mere tap of his forked stick sent them tumbling to the ground. The old man was wearing a long robe cinched at the waist with a length of coarse cloth from which hung his pipe and tobacco pouch. His long white beard was dotted with icy globules. “Come on if you’re willing to die!” he shouted shrilly as his face seemed to lengthen and green lights shot from his eyes. His would-be attackers fled in panic. Mother reached a decision: Turn back!
Picking up the handles of the cart, she wobbled off in a southwestern direction. The ice-covered axle creaked and groaned. But we set an example for others, who, without a word, fell in behind us – some even passed us in their hurry to get back to their homes.
Shards of ice crackled and exploded beneath the wheels, but were quickly replaced by the freezing rain that
