the weasel, its coat golden, its mouth as black as ink. She spotted it while she was squatting down relieving herself. It rested on its haunches, slowly twitching its paws at her, and she reacted as though she’d been struck by lightning: a powerful spasm shot up her back, like a leaping snake. She fell forward, screaming like a madwoman. By the time she’d come to her senses, the field was dark, and bright stars leaped through the black sky, restlessly, mysteriously. She felt her way out of the sorghum field, found the dirt path, and walked back to the village. The fanciful image of the weasel, its golden coat emitting a lustrous sheen like whiskers of grain, appeared and disappeared in front of her eyes, over and over, vivid and real. It was all she could do to contain the screams ready to rip from her throat; some did in fact get loose – she heard them. But they weren’t human screams, and she was shocked and frightened by their sound.
Second Grandma’s deranged state lasted a long time, leading her fellow villagers to conclude that she’d been possessed by the weasel. She was convinced that it had absolute control over her in some deep, dark place. Whatever it ordered her to do, she did: cry, laugh, speak in tongues, perform strange acts. Whenever the lightning bolt hit her in the middle of her back, it was as though she’d been split in two, and was struggling in a dark-red quagmire filled with the seductiveness of lust and death, sinking beneath the surface, then floating back to the top, only to sink once again. Spotting a rope with which she could pull herself out of the quagmire of lust, she grabbed it with both hands, but it too became part of the quagmire of desire, and she sank helplessly beneath the surface again. Always, the image of the potent, black-mouthed weasel swayed before her eyes, grinning hideously and whisking her vigorously with its tail; each time its tail brushed against her skin, a shout of uncontrollable excitement burst from her mouth. Finally, the exhausted weasel walked off, and Second Grandma crumpled to the ground, spittle drooling from the corners of her mouth, her body lathered in sweat, her face the colour of gold foil.
In order to free Second Grandma from her demon, Granddad rode his mule to the market at Cypress Orchid to fetch the Taoist exorcist Mountain Li, who lit incense and burned candles, then drew strange symbols on a piece of paper with a brush dipped in red ink, after which he mixed some dog blood with the incense ashes, pinched Second Grandma’s nose shut, and poured the concoction into her mouth. The stuff streamed down her throat and she cried, she tried to scream, she flailed her arms and legs, as the soulful essence oozed out through her pores.
Her condition began to improve after that, and some time later the weasel came to steal a chicken. While it was locked in a desperate struggle with a large yellow-legged, fiery-red rooster, one of its eyes was pecked out by its feathered adversary. It was writhing in agony in the snow when Second Grandma ran into the yard, stark-naked yet oblivious to the cold, holding the white wooden bolt in her hands and bringing it down with all her might on the weasel’s shameless, pointed snout. Having got her revenge, finally, she stood absently in the snow for quite a while, the bloody wooden bolt still in her hands. Then she bent over and beat her mentor, the weasel, to a pulp. Her madness spent, she turned and went back inside, carrying a residue of hatred with her.
As Second Grandma stared at the dried weasel blood on the white wooden bolt, she was suddenly gripped by a dormant and profoundly disturbing terror; she knew that her eyeballs were rolling wildly, and she heard a terrifying shriek erupt from her throat.
The flimsy door rocked only slightly before it came crashing open, and a golden-hued Japanese soldier, bayonet-tipped rifle in his hands, leaped nimbly into the room. In that shrieking split second, his ratlike features and crafty expression were transformed into the black-mouthed weasel that had died at her hands. His pointy chin, his black moustache above a pointy mouth, and his sly look were the spitting image of the weasel. From a hidden recess of Second Grandma’s memory, her derangement resurfaced, stronger and more violent than before. Little Auntie, her ears still ringing from Second Grandma’s shriek, was scared witless by the sight of her mother’s mouth distorted with hate on her ash-smeared face. Straining with all her might, she broke free of Second Grandma’s vicelike grip and jumped up onto the windowsill, where she stared at the six Japanese soldiers – the first and the last that she would ever see.
Light glinted off the bayonets as the Japanese soldiers walked up to Second Grandma’s kang and stood shoulder to shoulder. To Little Auntie their weasely faces were like sorghum cakes right out of the pan: brown with dark-red edges, warm and beautiful, lovely and inviting. Though she was only slightly frightened by their bayonets, her mother’s face terrified her.
The Japanese soldiers grinned, baring their teeth, some even, some bright. Second Grandma, torn between derangement and terror, stared at the soldiers’ ominous grins. She shrieked as she wrapped her arms tightly around her belly and pressed up against the wall. One of the soldiers, who must have been about five feet four and somewhere between thirty-five and forty years old, edged up to the kang, removed his cap, and scratched his balding scalp. In pidgin Chinese he said, ‘You, pretty girl, no be scared…’ He leaned his rifle against the edge of the kang, then crawled up clumsily, like a fat, squirming maggot. Second Grandma wished she could crawl into the cracks of the wall.
The tears running down her cheeks formed ruts in the ashes on her face. The Japanese soldier’s thick lips parted as he reached out with a coarse, fleshy finger and touched her face, making her skin crawl, as though a slimy toad had wriggled into the crotch of her pants. She shrieked louder than ever, and the soldier grabbed her legs, pulling her towards him, banging her head loudly against the wall. She lay there flat on her back with her belly sticking up like a little mound. The soldier rubbed it with his hand, then, his eyes nearly bursting with anger, drove his fist down into it, hard. Then, pinning her legs with his knees, he reached down and undid his belt. By then she had begun to fight back; struggling to a sitting position, she sank her teeth into his garlic-shoot nose.
The Japanese soldier let out a strange scream and released her belt. Grabbing his bleeding nose, he glared at Second Grandma, as though seeing her in a new light. His buddies roared with laughter as he pulled a grimy handkerchief out of his pocket and held it against his nose. He stood up, his expression swiftly transformed from that of a poet passionately declaiming his undying love into the savage look of a jackal, which suited him better. He picked up his rifle and held the glinting tip of his bayonet against Second Grandma’s belly. The final shriek burst from her mouth as she squeezed her eyes shut.
Little Auntie, still perched on the windowsill, read no malicious intent in the cold soldier’s fleshy round face; in fact, she even tried to grab the curious light reflected off his bald head, and was disgusted with Second Grandma for shrieking like a wild animal. But when she noticed the sudden change in his expression and saw him aim his bayonet at her mother’s belly, fear and an overpowering sense of love flooded her heart. She jumped down from the windowsill and rushed up to Second Grandma.
The rat-faced, shrunken-cheeked Japanese soldier who’d been the first into the room said something to his fat comrade, then jumped up onto the kang and dragged him back down to the floor, mocking him with laughter. Still holding on to the rifle, he reached out his other bony yellow hand and grabbed Little Auntie by the hair, tearing her violently from Second Grandma’s grasp, as if he were yanking a carrot out of the hard ground. He flung her against the window, then back onto the kang. Little Auntie forced back the sobs in her throat as the colour drained from her face. The form and spirit of that part of Second Grandma controlled by the loathsome fanciful image of the weasel was suddenly released, and she flung herself like a she-wolf at the Japanese soldier, who deftly met the charge by kicking her in the belly. Although the force was absorbed by the bundle of clothes, the kick sent her reeling up against the thin connecting wall of the bedroom.
The sobs Little Auntie had been holding back suddenly burst forth, loud and resounding. Second Grandma’s head quickly cleared, and the gaunt Japanese soldier standing in front of her was no longer linked to the phantasm of the weasel. His face was thin, the bridge of his nose high, sharp, and hooked, his eyes black and shiny; he looked like an articulate man of wide experience and considerable learning, someone well read and clever. Second Grandma knelt on the kang and pleaded in a sobbing voice: ‘Mister… honourable Commander… spare us… please spare us… Don’t you have wives and daughters at home… sisters…?’
The ratty pouches on the soldier’s cheeks twitched a couple of times beneath his black eyes. Although he couldn’t have understood Second Grandma’s tearful pleas, he seemed to know what they meant, for she saw his shoulders slump briefly in the din of Little Auntie’s wails. When Second Grandma glanced furtively at the other five Japanese soldiers, their expressions were all different; but she saw an oily-green, watery softness rolling gently beneath the hard crust of malevolence on their faces. Trying hard to maintain their malicious mockery, they stared at the skinny soldier standing on the kang. He quickly looked away; Second Grandma just as quickly sought out his eyes. Gnashing his teeth as though trying to control some deep emotion, he stuck the tip of his glinting bayonet against Little Auntie’s open mouth.
‘You, drop your pants! You, drop your pants!’ He spoke Chinese as though his tongue were petrified.
At that moment Second Grandma began to crumple under the spell of the weasel again; she saw the Japanese soldier standing on her kang as a gentle, bookish man one instant and the spitting image of the black-mouthed
