unhappy with the marriage they’ve arranged for her. It was the day her older brother called out to her, the day I helped her bring in the harvest that her parents signed an agreement with Liu Shengli’s grandfather and Cao Wen’s parents, stringing three boys and three girls together like so many locusts, a chain with six links, a tawdry way to create new families. She doesn’t hate me; she likes me.
Say something, Zhang Kou. Sing, Zhang Kou. “My husband languishes in a prison camp… his widow and orphaned daughter carry on the revolution…” Zhang Kou, just a couple more lines, two more, and I can take her hand, I can feel the warmth of her body, I can smell the sweat in her armpits. “Making revolution doesn’t mean acting rashly… It must be slow and sure, one careful step at a time.”
Explosions went off inside his head, and a halo of light swirled until he was encircled by a cloud of many colors. He reached out; his hand seemed to have eyes, or maybe hers had been waiting all along. He gripped it tightly. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing. It was not cold, yet he was shivering; his heart paled.
2.
The next night Gao Ma hid behind a stack of chaff on the edge of Jinju’s threshing floor, waiting anxiously. It was another starry night, with the slender crescent moon hanging, it seemed, from the tip of a tall tree, its luminous rays weakened by the encircling starlight. A chestnut colt galloped along the edge of the floor, which was bordered on the south by a wide trench whose sloping banks had been planted with indigo bushes. Occasionally the colt galloped into the trench and up the other side, and when it passed through the bushes it set them rustling. The lamps were lit at Jinju’s home, where her father-Fourth Uncle Fang-was in the yard talking loudly and being constantly interrupted by Fourth Aunt, Jinju’s mother. Gao Ma strained to hear their conversation, but was too far away. A yardful of parakeets-well over a hundred of them-were setting up a deafening racket at the home of the Fangs’ neighbor Gao Zhileng. The noise put everyone on edge. Gao Zhileng raised parakeets for profit, of which there was a great deal, and his was the only family in the village that did not rely on garlic for its livelihood.
The shrill squawks of the parakeets grated on the ears, as the chestnut colt, tail swishing rapidly, paced the area, its bright eyes poking holes in the misty darkness. It began nibbling at a pile of chaff, only half-seriously, it appeared, but enough to send the slightly mildewy smell of millet on the wind to Gao Ma, who crept around the stack to inch closer to Jinju’s barred gate, through which slivers of light seeped. He couldn’t tell what time it was, since his watch didn’t have a luminous dial. Around nine, he figured. Just then the clock in Gao Zhileng’s home began to chime, and Gao Ma moved far enough away from the parakeet squawks to count the chimes. Nine all together. He’d guessed right. His thoughts drifted back to what had happened the night before and to the movie
Gao Ma had squeezed Jinju’s hand, and she had squeezed his back. They hadn’t let go until Zhang Kou finished his ballad, and then only with great reluctance. In the confusion of all the getting up and going, he whispered, “I’ll be waiting for you tomorrow night by the millet chaff. We need to talk.”
He wasn’t looking at her, didn’t even know if she heard him. But the next day he worked so absentmindedly that he frequendy dug up seedlings and spared the weeds. The afternoon sun was still high in the sky when he went home, where he trimmed his beard, squeezed a couple of pimples alongside his nose, scraped some of the gunk off his teeth with the scissors, and washed his shaved scalp and neck with toilet soap. After a hurried meal he dug out his seldom-used toothbrush and toothpaste to give his teeth a good brushing.
The parakeets’ squawking made him edgy, and each time he strode up to the gate, he meekly turned and headed back. Then the gate creaked, setting off a drumroll in his heart. He thrust his hand into the stack of chaff up to the elbow without feeling a thing. The chestnut colt, suddenly energized, began to gallop, its hooves sending dirt clods thudding into the chaff with scary resonance.
“Where do you think you’re going at this late hour?” Fourth Aunt shouted.
“It’s not late. It’s barely dark out.” Just hearing Jinju’s voice made him feel slightly guilty.
“I asked you where you’re going,” Fourth Aunt repeated.
“Down to the riverbank to cool off,” Jinju replied with determination.
“Don’t be long.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t run away.”
Jinju, Jinju, Gao Ma moaned softly, how do you stand it all?
The latch clanged loudly as the gate was pulled shut. From his vantage point beside the chaff, Gao Ma longingly watched her blurred silhouette head north toward the river instead of coming toward him. He managed to keep from running after her, assuming this was a sham for her mother’s benefit.
Jinju… Jinju… He buried his face in the chaff, his eyes dampening. Meanwhile the colt galloped back and forth behind him, and the parakeets squawked. Off to the south, in the stinking, weed-infested reservoir, frogs croaked to one another, the mournful sound falling unpleasantly on the ear.
All this reminded Gao Ma of the night three years earlier when he and the regiment commander’s concubine had slipped away together: how the pert-nosed, freckle-faced woman threw herself into his arms, how he held her tight and smelled her heavy body odor. Like holding a wooden log, he embraced her even though he didn’t love her. You’re despicable, he had cursed himself, pretending to be in love in order to enhance your prospects with her patron. Yet things have a way of evening out, and I paid a heavy price for my hypocrisy.
But it’s different with Jinju. I’d die for Jinju, my Jinju.
She walked in the shadow of the wall, skirting the starlit threshing floor, and came toward him. His heart pounded wildly, he began to tremble, his teeth chattered.
She walked around the stack and stopped a few feet from him. “What do you want to talk to me about, Elder Brother Gao Ma?” Her voice quaked.
“Jinju…” His lips were so stiff he could barely get the words out. He heard his own heartbeat and a voice that quaked like a woman’s. He coughed-it sounded forced and unnatural.
“Dont… please don’t make any noise,” she pleaded anxiously as she backed up several steps.
The colt, feeling mischievous, rubbed its flank against the stack, even extracted some chaff with its lips and flung it to the ground in front of them.
“Not here,” he said. “Let’s go down to the trench.”
“I can’t… If you have something to say, hurry up and say it.”
“Not here, I said.” He walked down the edge of the threshing floor, all the way to the trench. Jinju still hadn’t moved. But when he turned to go back for her, she began walking timidly toward him. He threaded his way through the indigo bushes and waited for her at the bottom of the trench, and when she reached the gently sloping side, he took her hand and pulled her to him.
She tried to take her tiny hand, but he cupped it tightly in his and stroked it. “I love you, Jinju,” he blurted out. “Marry me!”
“Elder Brother Gao Ma,” she replied softly, “you know I’ve been betrothed so that my brother can get married.”
“I know, but I also know it’s not what you want.”
She loosened his grip with her free hand and liberated its mate. “Yes it is.”
“No, it’s not. Liu Shengli is a forty-five-year-old man with an infected windpipe. He’s too sickly to even carry a load of water. Are you telling me you’d marry coffin pulp like that?”
She whimpered in reply, the sound hanging in the air for a long moment. “What can I do?” she sobbed. “My brother’s over thirty… a cripple… Cao Wenling is only seventeen, and prettier than me…”
“You’re not your brother, and you’re not required to go to your grave for his sake.”
“Elder Brother Gao Ma, it’s fate. Go find yourself a good woman… Me… next life…” Holding her face in her
