As the sun’s rays died out, Mother looked up at the red sky. Fires crackled all around, sending hot ashes over the opening of the well; mixed with the sound of licking flames were the cries of children, the screams of women, and the bleating of goats, or maybe it was the tearful lowing of cows. Even from the bottom of the well, she could smell the stench of burning.
She had no idea how long she’d shuddered over the fires raging above her, since she’d lost all sense of time, but she could tell from the tiny slice of darkening sky that the fires were dying out. At first she heard an occasional burst of gunfire and the sound of a roof collapsing. But after a while there was nothing but silence, plus a few dim stars that appeared in the circle of sky above.
Mother fell asleep, and awoke chilled. By now her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and when she looked up at the pale-blue sky and the gentle rays of the morning sun reflected off the walls, she felt giddy. Her clothes were soggy from the dampness; the cold air touched her bones. She hugged her little brother tightly. Even though his fever seemed to have abated during the night, he was still much hotter than she. So Mother soaked up Little Uncle’s warmth, while he was cooled by her; during their time together at the bottom of the well, they achieved true life-sustaining symbiosis. Mother, who did not know that her parents were dead, expected to see their faces and to hear their familiar voices at any time; had she known, she might not have survived those days and nights in the well.
When I look back upon my family’s history, I find that the lives of all the key members have at some point been linked inextricably with some sort of dark, dank cave or hole, beginning with Mother. Granddad later outdid all the others, setting a record among civilised people of his generation for living in a cave. Finally, Father would produce an epilogue that, in political terms, would be anything but glorious, but when viewed from the human angle must be considered splendid. When the time came, he would wave his sole remaining arm towards the red clouds of dawn and come running on the wind to Mother, Elder Brother, Elder Sister, and me.
Mother was freezing on the outside but burning up inside. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since the previous morning. A searing thirst had tormented her since the night before, when the village was engulfed in flames; then, in the middle of the night, an overwhelming hunger reached its peak. As dawn was about to break, her guts seemed to twist into knots, until all she could feel was the gnawing pain in her belly. But now the mere thought of food nauseated her; it was the thirst she found unbearable. Her lungs felt dry and chapped, each breath producing the rustling sound of withered sorghum leaves.
Once again Little Uncle said meekly through blistered lips, ‘Sis… I’m thirsty…’ Mother didn’t have the heart to look into his small, wizened face, and there were no words to console him. The promises she’d made throughout the day and night had come to nothing. No sound, not even the bark of a dog, emerged from the village. That was when it occurred to her that her parents might be dead or might have been captured by the Japs. Her eyes stung, but she had no more tears to shed – the wretched state of her baby brother had forced her to grow up.
Momentarily forgetting her suffering, she laid him down on the brick floor and stood up to survey the walls around her. They were damp, of course, and the luxuriant appearance of moss briefly gave her new hope; but it offered no relief for their thirst, and it wasn’t edible. She squatted down and picked up a brick, then another. They were very heavy, as though water was stored up inside them. A red centipede crawled out of the hollow where the bricks had been, and Mother jumped away, not daring to pick up any more. Nor did she dare sit down, for something horrible had occurred the morning before that made her realise she was now a woman.
Years later, Mother told my wife that her first menstrual period had come while she was down in that dark, dank well, and when my wife told me, the two of us felt enormous compassion for the fifteen-year-old girl who would later give birth to me.
Mother had no choice but to pin her final scrap of hope on that puddle of filthy water in which the toad was soaking, no matter how much its hideous features frightened or disgusted her. Nothing had changed from the day before: the toad hadn’t moved, its sombre eyes still glaring at her with hostility, its warty skin still making her skin crawl. Her new-found courage quickly evaporated. Poison darts emanating from the toad’s eyes prickled her all over. She averted her eyes, but that didn’t blot out the terrifying image of the toad.
Mother turned to look at her dying brother, and as she did so, her eye caught a tiny clump of milky-white mushrooms growing beneath two bricks. Her heart racing with excitement, she slid the bricks away and picked some of the mushrooms. Her innards twisted into knots as she gazed at the food in her hand. She shoved a mushroom into her mouth and swallowed it whole. It tasted so good that her hunger pangs returned in a flash. She put another in her mouth. Little Uncle moaned softly, but Mother consoled herself with the thought that she should try them first, in case they were toadstools. That’s right, isn’t it? Of course it is. She put one into Little Uncle’s mouth, but his jaws didn’t move; he just looked at her through tiny slits. ‘Harmony, eat it. I found it for you. Eat it.’ She held up another and waved it under his nose. His jaws twitched, as though he were chewing, so she fed him another one. But he coughed and spat them both out. By then his lips were so chapped they bled. He lay on the brick floor, close to death.
Mother swallowed a dozen or so little mushrooms, and her intestines, which had gone into hibernation, suddenly came to life, writhing painfully and making a huge racket. She was sweating more than she had at any time since being lowered into the well; it would be the last time. Sweat drenched her clothes; her armpits and the backs of her knees were wet and sticky. The chilled air seemed to penetrate the marrow of her bones, and she slumped unaware to the floor and lay beside her baby brother. At noon on her second day in the well, Mother fell into a swoon.
When she woke up, dusk was falling. She saw reddish-purple rays of light on the eastern wall as the sun sank in the west. The ancient windlass was bathed in the sunset, giving her the contradictory sensations of seeing remote antiquity and the approach of doomsday at the same time. The ringing in her ears, which hardly ever stopped, was now joined by the sound of footsteps out there, but she couldn’t tell if it was real or an illusion. She no longer had the strength to cry out, and was so thirsty her chest seemed to be baking in a fire. Even the act of breathing brought excruciating pain. Little Uncle was already beyond suffering, beyond joy; he lay on the brick floor, a pile of withered yellow skin. When Mother looked down into his glazed eyes, everything turned dark in front of her: the black shroud of death was settling over the dry well.
The second night at the bottom of the well seemed to fly by; Mother passed it in a semiwakeful state. Several times she dreamed she’d sprouted wings and was circling ever upward towards the opening of the well. But the shaft seemed endless, and no matter how far she flew she never drew any closer to the opening. She tried flapping her wings faster, but the elongation of the shaft kept pace with her. Once during the night she awoke briefly to feel her brother’s cold body beside her. Unable to bear the thought that he was dead, she tried to convince herself that she must be hot and feverish. A curved ray of moonlight fell on the puddle of greenish water, illuminating the toad like a precious gem bobbing in a sea of emeralds. At that moment Mother imagined that she and the sacred amphibian had reached an understanding: it would give up as much of its water as she needed, for which she would fling it out of the well, like a stone, if that was what it wanted. Tomorrow, she thought, if I hear footsteps tomorrow, I’ll hurl pieces of brick out of the well, even if it’s Japanese soldiers or Chinese puppet troops passing by. She needed to let people know there was somebody down there.
When dawn broke again, Mother had learned everything there was to know about the bottom of the well. Taking advantage of her early-morning energy level, she scraped off a layer of green moss and stuffed it into her mouth. It didn’t taste bad, maybe a little pungent. The problem was her throat, which was so dry it wouldn’t function properly, and the chewed moss came right back up when she tried to swallow it. Her gaze returned to the puddle of water and the toad, which maintained its venomous glare. Finding it more than she could bear, she turned her head and cried angry, fearful tears.
At around noon, she was certain she heard footsteps and human voices. Overjoyed, she rose unsteadily to her feet and shouted at the top of her lungs; but no sound emerged. Though she grabbed a piece of brick, she was able to lift it no higher than her waist before it slipped out of her hand and fell to the ground. Her last gasp. Hearing the footsteps and voices disappear in the distance, she sat crestfallen beside the body of her brother, and as she looked into his face she acknowledged the fact that he was dead. She laid her hand on his cold face, revulsion welling up in her chest. Death had separated them. The glare in his sightless eyes belonged to a different world.
She spent that night in a state of absolute terror, for she believed she had seen a snake as thick as the handle of a sickle. It was black with little yellow spots down the centre of its back. Its head was flat, like a spatula, its neck ringed by a yellow band. The cold, gloomy atmosphere of the well originated in this snake’s body. Several times she thought she could feel it wrapping itself around her, its flicking tongue aiming red darts at her and exhaling blasts of cold air.
