and settled down.
‘Who’d have guessed that he was as stupid as a pig and as dumb as an ox, short on courage and long on bullshit? All he cares about is his little plot of land in Saltwater Gap. Our ancestors had a saying: Birds perch on the best wood, a good horse neighs when it sees a master trainer. After thinking it over, I’ve concluded that in all of Northeast Gaomi Township you, Commander Yu, are the only true leader. My comrades and I demanded that Black Eye bring you into the society. It’s what they call “inviting the tiger into the house”. When you’re one of us, if you can sleep on firewood and drink gall, like the famous king of Yue, you’ll gain everyone’s sympathy and respect. Then I’ll wait for a chance to get rid of Black Eye and nominate you to replace him. With a change in the ruling house, discipline will be tightened. Once we bring Northeast Gaomi Township under our control, we’ll move north and occupy Southeast Pingdu Township and Northern Jiao Township, then unite all three areas.
‘When that’s done, we can set up our capital in Saltwater Gap under the flag of the Iron Society, with you in command. From there we’ll send our forces in three directions, taking Jiao, Gaomi, and Pingdu counties, annihilating the Communists, the Nationalists, and the Japs. With the three capitals in our hands, we can set up our own nation!’
Granddad nearly fell off his horse. He looked with amazement at this handsome young man who was bursting with ideas of statehood, and his insides ached with excitement. Reining in his horse, he tumbled out of the saddle and, since it didn’t seem appropriate to kneel before Five Troubles, reached up, grabbed his sweaty hand, and said in a tremulous voice, ‘Sir! Why couldn’t I have met you before this? Why did it take so long?’
‘A leader shouldn’t talk like that. Let’s put our hearts and minds together to do something really important!’ Five Troubles said with tears in his eyes.
Black Eye, who was more than a li ahead of them, reined in his horse and shouted, ‘Hey – are you two coming or not?’
Cupping his hand over his mouth, Five Troubles yelled, ‘We’re coming! Old Yu’s girth broke. We’re fixing it now!’ He turned to look at Father, who was sitting bright-eyed on his horse. ‘Young Master Yu,’ he said, ‘we’ve been discussing serious matters. Don’t breathe a word of our conversation to anyone!’
Father nodded vigorously.
Granddad felt more clearheaded than ever before in his life. Five Troubles’ words were a rag that had wiped his heart clean, until it shone like a mirror; finally, he could see the purpose of his struggles, and he uttered something that even Father, who was sitting in front of him, didn’t hear clearly: ‘Heaven’s will!’
Alternating between a gallop and a trot, the horses arrived at the banks of the Black Water River at noon. That afternoon they left the river behind them, and as night was about to fall, Granddad rose up in the saddle to gaze out at the Salty Water River, which was half as broad as the Black Water River and meandered through alkaline plains. Its grey waters looked like dull glass that gave off a murky glare.
8
COUNTY MAGISTRATE NINE Dreams Cao had used a brilliant stratagem in the late autumn of 1928 to wipe out the bandits of Northeast Gaomi Township led by my granddad. Decades later, when Granddad was in the mountains of Hokkaido, this tragic page in history was always before him. He thought back to how smug he had felt as he was driven in his black Chevrolet sedan on the bumpy Northeast Gaomi Township mountain road, an unwitting decoy who had led eight hundred good men into a trap. His limbs grew ice-cold at the memory of those eight hundred men lined up in a remote gulley outside Jinan City to be mowed down by machine guns. While he was roasting fine- scaled silver carp from Hokkaido’s shallow rivers, he agonised over the eight hundred deaths…
After making a pile of broken bricks, Granddad climbed over the high wall around the Jinan police station in the small hours of the morning, then slid down the other side into clumps of scrap paper and weeds, frightening off a couple of stray cats. He slipped into a house, changed from his black wool military uniform into some tattered clothes, then went out and merged with the crowds on the street to watch his fellow villagers and his men being loaded onto boxcars. Sentries stood around the station with dark, murderous looks on their faces. Black smoke poured out of the locomotive, steam hissed from the exhaust pipes… Granddad walked south on the rusty tracks.
At dawn, after walking all day and night, he reached a dry riverbed that reeked of blood. The bodies of hundreds of Northeast Gaomi Township bandits were piled up in layers, filling half the riverbed. He felt remorseful, horrified, vengeful. He was fed up with a life that was little more than an unending cycle of kill-or-be-killed, eat-or- be-eaten. He thought of the chimney smoke curling in the air above his quiet village; of the creaking pulley as a bucket of clear water was brought out of the well to water a fuzzy young donkey; of a fiery red rooster standing on a wall covered with date branches to crow at the radiant rays of dawn. He decided to go home.
After spending his whole life in the confines of Northeast Gaomi Township, this was the first time he’d ever travelled so far, and home seemed to be on the other side of the world. Recalling that the train to Jinan had travelled west the entire trip, he thought that all he had to do was follow the tracks east and he’d have no trouble getting back to Gaomi County. When one of the trains came down the tracks, he hid in a nearby ditch or amid some crops to watch the red or black wheels rumble past, bending the curved tracks.
Granddad ate when he could beg food in a village and drank when he came upon a river. Always he headed east, day and night. After two weeks, he finally spied the two familiar blockhouses at the Gaomi train station, where the county aristocracy was gathered to see off their onetime magistrate Nine Dreams Cao, who had been promoted to police commissioner for Shandong Province. Granddad crumpled to the ground, not sure why or how, and lay with his face in the black earth for a long time before becoming aware of the pungent taste of blood in the dirt.
He decided not to go home, even though he had often seen Grandma’s snow-white body and Father’s strangely innocent smile in the cold realm of his dreams. He awoke to find his grimy face bathed in hot tears and his heart aching. When he gazed up at the stars, he knew how deeply he missed his wife and son. But now that the decisive moment had arrived, and he could smell the intimate aroma of wine mash permeating the darkness, he wavered.
The slap and a half from Grandma had created a barrier between them, like a cruel river. ‘Ass!’ she’d cursed him. ‘Swine!’ An angry scowl had underscored her outburst as she stood there, hands on hips, back bent, neck thrust forward, a trickle of bright-red blood running down her chin. The awful sight had thrown his heart into confusion.
In all his years, no woman had ever cursed him as viciously as that, and certainly no woman had ever slapped him. It wasn’t that he felt no remorse over his affair with Passion, but the humiliating verbal and physical abuse had driven that remorse out of his heart, and self-recrimination had been supplanted by a powerful drive to avenge himself.
Emboldened by a sense of self-righteousness, he’d gone to live with Passion in Saltwater Gap, some fifteen li distant. After buying a house, he led what even he knew was a troubled life, discovering in Passion’s deficiencies Grandma’s virtues. Now that he’d narrowly escaped death, his legs had carried him back to this spot, and he wanted to rush into that compound and revive the past; but the sound of those curses erected a barrier that cut him off from the road ahead.
Granddad dragged his exhausted body to Saltwater Gap in the middle of the night, where he stood in front of the house he’d bought two years earlier and looked up at the late-night moon high in the southwestern sky. Passion’s vigorous, slender body floated in front of his eyes, and as he thought about the golden flames ringing her body and the blue flames issuing from her eyes, a tormenting nostalgia made him forget his mental and physical anguish. He pulled himself over the wall and jumped into the compound.
Keeping a rein on his feelings, he knocked on the window frame and cried out softly: ‘Passion… Passion…’
Inside, a muffled cry of alarm, followed by the sound of intermittent sobs.
‘Passion, can’t you tell who it is? It’s me, Yu Zhan’ao!’
‘Brother… dear brother! Scare me to death, but I’m not afraid! I want to see you even if you’re a ghost! You’ve come to me, I, I’m deliriously happy… You didn’t forget me after all… Come in… Come in…’
‘Passion, I’m not a ghost. I’m still alive, I escaped!’ He pounded on the window. ‘Did you hear that? Could a ghost make sounds like that on your window?’
