The Jiao-Gao soldiers looked like a frenzied pack of dogs as they charged the enemy barracks. Pocky Cheng, who had retrieved his bag of hand grenades, ran like a madman towards the tiled buildings.
Rifle fire, exploding grenades, shouts, and the screams of Japs and their puppet allies shattered the winter calm at Ma Family Hamlet. The local dogs were barking like crazy.
Pocky Cheng lobbed twenty grenades into a window, and the pathetic cries of the Japanese inside reminded him of the day years earlier when they had hurled their grenades into the sandal workshops. But instead of satisfying his sense of vengeance, this re-enacted scene caused him such anguish that his heart felt as though it were being sliced open.
This was the most intense battle fought by the Jiao-Gao regiment since its formation, and it ended with the most brilliant and complete victory anywhere in the Binhai region, for which a special committee bestowed a commendation upon the entire regiment. The dog soldiers were caught up in wild joy, until two occurrences caused them great distress: First, the store of weapons and ammunition that fell into their hands after the battle was allocated to the Binhai Independent Battalion. Commander Jiang knew that the special committee’s decision was the right one, but his soldiers grumbled with resentment, and when battalion soldiers came to collect the weapons, looks of shame covered their faces. Second, Pocky Cheng, who had so distinguished himself in the battle at Ma Family Hamlet, was found hanging from a tree at the head of the village. All the evidence pointed to suicide. From the back he looked like a dog, but from the front a man.
9
THERE WERE NO more screams from Second Grandma after Grandma washed her body with hot water. A gentle smile graced her scarred and battered face the day long, but blood kept flowing down below. Granddad called in every doctor in the area, and all sorts of medicinal potions were tried.
The last doctor was someone Uncle Arhat brought over from the town of Pingdu, a man in his eighties with a silvery beard, a broad fleshy forehead, and long curved fingernails. A comb made from a bull’s horn, a silver ear pick, and a bone toothpick hung from the buttons of his mandarin robe. Granddad watched him lay a long finger on Second Grandma’s pulse, and when he was finished he crossed her left hand over her right and said, ‘Make preparations for the funeral!’
Granddad and Grandma felt miserable, but they saw the old doctor out and did as he said. She stayed up to make a set of burial clothes, while he sent Uncle Arhat to the carpentry shop for a coffin.
The next day, with the help of neighbour women, Grandma dressed Second Grandma in the newly made clothes. No resentment showed on Second Grandma’s face as she lay stiffly on the kang in a red silk jacket, blue satin pants, a green silk shirt, and red satin embroidered slippers, a gentle smile on her face, her chest rising and falling, frailly yet tenaciously.
At noon Father spotted a cat as black as ink pacing the ridge of the roof and letting out blood-curdling screeches. He hurled a broken piece of brick at the cat, which sprang out of the way, landed on one of the roof tiles, and pranced off.
When it was time to light the lamps, the distillery hands walked up with the coffin and laid it down in the yard. Grandma lit a soybean-oil light with three wicks, because it was a special moment. Everyone stood around waiting anxiously for Second Grandma to breathe her last. Father hid behind the door staring at her ears, which in the lamplight looked like amber, and were just as transparent, evoking a sense of mystery that danced in brilliant colour in his heart. At that moment he knew that the black cat was stepping on a roof tile again, that its black eyes were flashing, and that it was rending the darkness with obscene screeches. His scalp burned, his hair seemed to stand up like porcupine quills.
Suddenly Second Grandma’s eyes snapped open; and although her gaze was fixed, her lids fluttered, her cheeks twitched, and her thick lips quivered – once, twice, three times – followed by a screech more hideous than that of a cat in heat. Father noticed that the golden light from the soybean-oil lamp had turned as green as onion leaves, and in that flickering green light, the look on Second Grandma’s face was no longer human.
‘Little sister,’ Grandma said, ‘little sister, what’s wrong?’
A stream of epithets poured from Second Grandma’s mouth: ‘Son of a whore, I’ll never forgive you! You can kill my body, but you can’t kill my spirit! I’ll skin you alive and rip the tendons right out of your body!’
It wasn’t Second Grandma’s voice, Father was sure of that, but the voice of someone well over fifty.
Grandma shrank from the force of Second Grandma’s curses.
Second Grandma’s eyelids fluttered as rapidly as lightning; one minute she was screaming, the next cursing, the sound shaking the rafters and filling the room. Her breath was glacial. Father saw that from the neck down her body was as stiff as a board, and he wondered where she found the strength to scream.
Not knowing what to do, Granddad told Father to summon Uncle Arhat from the eastern compound. Even there you could hear the terrifying screams.
Uncle Arhat walked into the room, glanced at Second Grandma, and quickly led Granddad outside by the sleeve. Father followed them. ‘Manager Yu,’ he said softly, ‘she’s already dead. She must be possessed.’
‘He’d barely got the words out when he heard her curse him loudly from inside: ‘Arhat Liu, you son of a whore! No easy death for you! Skin you alive, rip the tendons out of your body, cut off your prick…’
‘Wash her with river water to exorcise the demon,’ Uncle Arhat said after a thoughtful pause.
Second Grandma’s curses kept coming.
When Uncle Arhat walked inside with a jug of filthy river water, he confronted waves of laughter. ‘Arhat, Arhat, pour it, pour the water, your auntie’s thirsty now!’
Father watched one of the hired hands force a funnel into Second Grandma’s mouth, and another pour the water, which eddied momentarily, then disappeared so fast it was impossible to believe it was actually emptying into her stomach.
Second Grandma quietened down. Her belly was as flat as ever, but her chest heaved, as though she were gasping for air.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Okay,’ Uncle Arhat said, ‘she’s old now!’
Once more Father sensed the patter of paws on the overhead tiles, as though the black cat were on the prowl again.
Second Grandma’s rigid face parted in a bewitching smile. She screamed once or twice before a stream or turbid water gushed from her mouth. The fountain rose straight up, at least two feet in the air, then came straight down, fanning out as the drops splashed like chrysanthemum petals on her newly made funeral clothes.
Second Grandma’s fountain trick sent the hired hands running from the room in fright. ‘Run,’ she shouted, ‘run, run, you can’t get away, the monk can run but the temple will never get away!’
Uncle Arhat looked imploringly at Granddad, who returned the look, as Second Grandma’s curses grew more spirited again. Now they were accompanied by spasms in her arms and legs. ‘Jap dogs,’ she cursed, ‘Chinese dogs, in thirty years they’ll be everywhere. Yu Zhan’ao, you can’t get away. Like a toad that eats a blister beetle, the worst is yet to come for you!’
Her body arched like a bow, as though she wanted to sit up.
‘Oh no!’ Uncle Arhat gasped. ‘A sitting corpse! Quick, give me a flintstone.’
Grandma tossed him the flintstone.
Somehow Granddad found the courage to pin Second Grandma down so Uncle Arhat could press the flint down over her heart. It didn’t work.
Uncle Arhat began to back out of the room. ‘Uncle,’ Granddad said, ‘you can’t leave now!’
‘Mistress,’ Uncle Arhat said to Grandma, ‘bring me a spade, quick!’
Once Second Grandma’s chest was pressed down by the spade her body grew still. She was left in the room to suffer alone, as Grandma, Granddad, Uncle Arhat, and Father went into the yard.
‘Yu Zhan’ao,’ Second Grandma shouted from inside, ‘I want to eat a yellow-legged rooster!’
‘Take my gun and shoot one!’ Granddad said.
‘No,’ Uncle Arhat said. ‘Not now. She’s already dead!’
‘Quick, uncle,’ Grandma said, ‘think of something!’
