in the mirror, she loosened her hairnet, releasing long, flowing hair that quickly covered her back with its satiny sheen, all the way down to the curve of her legs. When she pulled it across her shoulder with her left hand, it spilled over her breast, where she combed it out with a pear-wood comb. Grandma had uncommonly thick, shiny, black hair that lightened a bit at the tips. Once it was combed out smooth, she twisted it into large ebony blossoms, which she secured with four silver combs. Then she trimmed her fringe so that it fell just short of her eyebrows. After rewrapping her feet, she put on a pair of white cotton stockings, tied her trouser cuffs tightly, and slipped on a pair of embroidered slippers that accentuated her bound feet.
It was Grandma’s tiny feet that had caught the attention of Shan Tingxiu, and it was her tiny feet that had aroused the passions of the sedan bearer Yu Zhan’ao. She was very proud of them. Even a pock-faced witch is assured of marriage if she has tiny bound feet, but no one wants a girl with large unbound feet, even if she has the face of an immortal. Grandma, with her bound feet
Now that she was ready, Grandma left the house, clicking her feet. A blanket had been thrown over the back of the family’s little donkey, in whose glistening eyes Grandma noticed a spark of human understanding. She swung her leg over the donkey’s back and straddled it, unlike most women. Great-Grandma had tried to get her to ride sidesaddle, but Grandma dug in her heels and the donkey started off down the road, its rider sitting proudly on its back, head up and eyes straight ahead.
Once she was on her way, Grandma didn’t look back, and although Great-Granddad was holding the reins at first, when they were out of the village she took them from him and guided the donkey herself, leaving him to trot along behind her.
Another thunderstorm had struck during the three days. Grandma noticed a section of sorghum the size of a millstone where the leaves were singed and shrivelled, a spot of emaciated whiteness amid the surrounding green. Assuming that lightning was the culprit, she was reminded of the previous year, when lightning had struck and killed her friend Beauty, a girl of seventeen, literally frying her hair and burning her clothes to cinders. A design had been scorched into her back, which some people said was the script of heavenly tadpoles.
Rumours spread that greed had killed Beauty, who had caused the death of an abandoned baby. The details were lurid. On her way to market one day, she heard a bawling baby by the roadside. When she unwrapped the swaddling clothes she found a pink, newborn baby boy and a note that said: ‘Father was eighteen, mother seventeen, the moon was directly overhead, the three stars were in the western sky, when our son, Road Joy, was born. Father had already married Second Sister Zhang, a girl with unbound feet from West Village. Mother will marry Scar Eye from East Village. It breaks our hearts to abandon our newborn son. Snot runs down his father’s chin, tears stream down his mother’s cheeks, but we stifle our sobs so no one will hear us. Road Joy, Road Joy, our joy on the road, whoever finds you will be your parents. We have wrapped you in a yard of silk, and have left twenty silver dollars. We beg a kindhearted passerby to store up karma by saving our son’s precious life.’
People said that Beauty took the silk and the silver dollars, but abandoned the infant in the sorghum field, for which heaven punished her by sending down a bolt of lightning. Grandma refused to believe the rumours about her best friend, but as she pondered the tragic mysteries of life her heart was gripped by desolation and melancholy.
The rain-soaked road was still wet and pitted by pelting raindrops; soft mud, with a light oily sheen, filled the holes. Once again the donkey left its hoofprints in the mud. Katydids hid in the grass and on the sorghum leaves, vibrating their long silken beards and sawing their transparent wings to produce a cheerless sound. The long summer was about to end, and the sombre smell of autumn was in the air. Swarms of locusts, sensing the change of season, dragged their seed-filled bellies out of the sorghum fields onto the road, where they bored their hindquarters into the hard surface to lay their eggs.
Great-Granddad snapped off a sorghum stalk and smacked the rump of the weary donkey, which tucked its tail between its legs and shot forward a few paces before resuming its unhurried pace. Great-Granddad must have been feeling very pleased with himself as he walked behind the donkey, for he began singing snatches of popular local opera, making up the words as he went along. ‘Wu Dalang drank poison, how bad he felt… His seven lengths of intestines and the eight lobes of his lungs lurched and trembled… The ugly man took a beautiful wife, bringing calamity to his door… Ah – ye – ye… Big Wu’s belly is killing him… waiting for Second Brother to complete his mission… to return home and avenge his murder…’
Grandma’s heart thumped wildly as she listened to Great-Granddad’s crazy song. The image of that scowling young man, sword in hand, appeared in a flash. Who was he? What was he up to? It dawned on her that, even though they didn’t know each other, their lives were already as close as fish and water. Their sole encounter had been lightning quick and was over in a flash, like a dream, yet not like a dream. She had been shaken to the depths of her soul, overcome by spirits. Resign yourself to your fate, she thought as she heaved a long sigh.
Grandma let the donkey proceed freely as she listened to her dad’s fractured rendition of the Wu Dalang song. A breath of wind and a puff of fire, and there they were, in Toad Hollow. The donkey kept its nostrils closed tight as it pawed the ground, refusing to go any farther, even when Great-Granddad smacked it on the rump with his sorghum switch. ‘Get moving, you bastard! Get going, you rotten donkey bastard!’ The switch sang out against the donkey’s rump, but instead of moving forward, it backed up.
An awful stench assailed Grandma’s nostrils. Quickly dismounting and covering her nose with her sleeve, she tugged on the reins to get the donkey moving. It looked up at her, its mouth open, tears filling its eyes. ‘Donkey,’ she said, ‘grit your teeth and walk past it. There’s no mountain that can’t be scaled and no river that can’t be forded.’ Moved by her words, it raised its head and brayed, then galloped forward, dragging her along so fast her feet barely touched the ground and her clothes fluttered in the wind like red clouds tumbling in the sky. She glanced at the sham highwayman’s corpse as they passed. A scene of filth and corruption greeted her eyes: a million fat maggots had gorged themselves until only a few pieces of rotting flesh covered his bones.
Grandma climbed back onto the donkey after they’d managed to drag one another past Toad Hollow. Gradually she became aware of the smell of sorghum wine floating on the northeast wind. She whipped up her courage, but as she drew nearer to the climactic scene of the drama her sense of fear and foreboding was as strong as ever. Steam rose from the ground under the blazing sun, but shivers ran down her spine. The village where the Shans lived was far away, and Grandma, surrounded by the thick aroma of sorghum wine, felt as if the marrow in her spine had frozen solid. A man in the field to her right began to sing in a loud, full voice:
Little sister, boldly you move on
Your jaw set like a steel trap
Bones as hard as cast bronze
From high atop the embroidery tower
You toss down the embroidered ball
Striking me on the head
Now join me in a toast with dark-red sorghum wine.
‘Hey there, opera singer, come out! That’s terrible singing! Just awful!’ Great-Granddad shouted towards the sorghum field.
3
FATHER FINISHED HIS fistcake as he stood on the withered grass, turned blood-red by the setting sun. Then he walked gingerly up to the edge of the water. There on the stone bridge across the Black Water River the lead truck, its tyres flattened by the barrier of linked rakes, crouched in front of the other three. Its railings and fenders were stained by splotches of gore. The upper half of a Japanese soldier was draped over one of the railings, his steel helmet hanging upturned by a strap from his neck. Dark blood dripped into it from the tip of his nose. The water sobbed as it flowed down the riverbed. The heavy, dull rays of sunlight were pulverised by tiny ripples on its surface. Autumn insects hidden in the damp mud beneath the water plants set up a mournful chirping. Sorghum in the fields sizzled as it matured. The fires were nearly out in the third and fourth trucks; their blackened hulks crackled and split, adding to the discordant symphony.
